Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

BRITISH RAILWAYS BILL

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL BILL [Lords]

Orders for consideration read.

To be considered tomorrow.

Oral Answers to Questions — ENVIRONMENT

Waltham Forest

Mr. Deakins: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment how many new housing starts there have been in the London borough of Waltham Forest in each of the past four years.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Sir George Young): The figures, which are published in "Local Housing Statistics". are: 464 in 1979, 219 in 1980, 261 in 1981 and 256 in 1982. However, in the first half of 1983 there were 241 starts, almost as many as in the whole of each of the two previous years.

Mr. Deakins: Is the Minister aware that those are rather paltry figures for a greater London borough with a considerable population? Is he further aware that they offer no hope to those of my constituents who are extremely inadequately housed, particularly in conditions of overcrowding and dampness? Do my constituents really have to wait another three or four years until we have a Government who would give their housing needs top priority?

Sir George Young: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will take a broader view of the housing need in his constituency and accept that many local authorities, particularly in London, are switching resources from new build into the modernisation and improvement of existing stock, into the modernisation of council estates, and into bringing vacant properties back into use. If he takes that broader view, I hope he will find that his constituents have a more encouraging picture than the one that he has just painted.

Mr. Proctor: My hon. Friend will be aware that the London borough of Walthan Forest council owns houses in my constituency of Billericay. I believe that discussions are taking place between Waltham Forest and Basildon about the transfer of those houses to Basildon. Does my hon. Friend envisage any difficulties over that transfer?

Sir George Young: If the local authorities do not agree on the voluntary transfer my right hon. Friend has a role to play towards the end of the negotiations, and it would be wrong for me to prejudice his decision by commenting at this stage.

Local Government Reorganisation

Mr. Madden: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on the main benefits to ratepayers from his proposals for further reorganisation of local government.

The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Patrick Jenkin): Abolishing the GLC and the metropolitan county councils will, by removing a tier of local government, produce savings from which ratepayers in these areas will benefit.

Mr. Madden: How did the Government make these proposals without havig a cost-benefit analysis made? Is it not true that if these ludicrous proposals go through


ratepayers will be left with a hefty bill, diminishing services and loss of democratic control over those services? When the Secretary of State is in Bradford a week on Friday, will he take the opportunity to announce that he is scrapping these proposals and switching the £160 million or so that they will cost to places such as Bradford in order to avoid cuts in education and the National Health Service and to avoid the closure of hospitals such as Thornton View hospital in that city?

Mr. Jenkin: I have not heard so much rubbish for a long time. By removing an entire tier of local government, which experience has shown to be unnecessary, it seems to me inevitable that substantial savings will be made. The hon. Gentleman knows that the White Paper contains proposals whereby the staffing and precepts of joint boards will be watched very carefully for a transitional period of three years to make sure that there is no repeat of the empire building that went on before.

Mr. Shersby: What safeguards does my right hon. Friend propose over the precepting powers of the new joint boards?

Mr. Jenkin: They will be subject to the system of selective rate control, for which legislation will be introduced in this Session. As I have just said, for the first three transitional years Government approval of the precepts will be required.

Mr. Simon Hughes: How can the Secretary of State justify the proposed abolition of the GLC with the consequence that London, unlike any other major capital city in this continent, and larger than at least 18 sovereign states in the world, will be left with no strategic authority for all strategic issues? What will the financial benefits be, because there is none set out in the White Paper?

Mr. Jenkin: The hon. Gentleman may not recollect that when the Herbert commission recommended a structure for local government in London over 20 years ago the word "strategic" did not appear in its report. During the 1960s and 1970s some of us sought to see whether it was possible to define a strategic issue. In fact, none cannot equally be performed by other more economical means. That is why we have come to the conclusion that the search by the GLC and the metropolitan counties for some type of strategic role has demonstrated that they have no such role.

Mr. Benyon: As it appears that there are considerable controversies about cost savings, if any, as a result of the proposals, will my right hon. Friend appoint a prominent firm of chartered accountants to assess the conflicting claims?

Mr. Jenkin: Savings will depend upon the precise way in which the services are devolved to the boroughs and districts and on the decisions by the boroughs and districts and the joint boards on how they will carry out the functions. It is not possible at this stage to do other than make assumptions which may or may not be justified. I am confident that there is substantial scope for savings and we intend to ensure that they are brought about.

Mr. O'Brien: Is the Minister aware of the statement by his predecessor in May, just before the general election, that there would be a saving of 9,000 jobs and £150 million through the abolition of the Greater London council and the metropolitan councils? Is the Minister saying that that is no longer a fact?

Mr. Jenkin: I have repeated the figures on a number of occasions since the election. They represent a broad estimate and could be substantially higher. More than half the total local government overspend this year is attributable to the upper tier councils, including the GLC and ILEA. The total amount of overspend involved there is about £415 million. The hon. Gentleman can see from that that there is plenty of scope for saving.

Mr. Heddle: Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that the joint boards will be manned entirely by democratically elected councillors and that they will not become Government-appointed quangos?

Mr. Jenkin: It is now clear that all that we have read in the local government and other presses about how we plan to go for a whole bunch of quangos is nonsense. The only exception to the joint boards consisting of local councillors nominated by elected councils is the provision for the continued presence of magistrates on police boards.

Mr. Kaufman: The Secretary of State has said that he wants to cut out an unnecessary tier of government and empire building and that these proposals will produce savings. Will he quantify precisely the savings from the abolition of seven elected local authorities and their replacement by one London planning commission; five new police joint boards; seven new fire joint boards; one London transport authority; six new transport joint boards; one staff commission; seven bodies to hold and dispose of property; a statutory body for the management of debt, residual superannuation matters and residual legal liabilities in London; consortia for central purchasing in London; seven administering bodies for external debt; seven administering bodies for staff superannuation; seven administering bodies for legal rights and liabilities; seven statutory joint arrangements for waste disposal and a 48-member ILEA being replaced by a 50-member ILEA?

Mr. Jenkin: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who has obviously devoted attention to the White Paper. Of course, the right hon. Gentleman has left out of account the disappearance of an entire tier of elected councillors and all the overhead administration that goes with that. It is nonsense to imagine that because some of the services will be run by the districts and boroughs jointly—although most will be devolved upon the districts and boroughs, which are anxious to receive the powers, as the right hon. Gentleman will know from his Manchester experience—this cannot be achieved without substantial economies. We shall monitor the overheads necessary to staff the joint boards and ensure that the savings are achieved. I assure the right hon. Gentleman of that.

Local Government Manpower

Mr. Tony Lloyd: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he has made any forecast of the change in the total number of employees in local government service in England and Wales between the 1979–80 and the 1983–84 financial years.

Mr. Patrick Jenkin: We do not attempt to forecast these figures, but I can tell the hon. Member that between June 1979 and June 1983 local authority manpower fell by 111,000 compared with an increase in Labour's last four years of 48,000.

Mr. Lloyd: Does the Secretary of State accept that the job losses, far from increasing the efficiency of local


government services, have led to a cut in the quality and quantity of those services? Does he accept that local authorities have a critical role to play in the inner city areas and should be breaking the cycle of decline instead of being prevented from doing so by the Government's actions?

Mr. Jenkin: There is no correlation between the numbers of people employed and the quality of services provided. Some of the best services are provided by authorities which manage with the fewest people. One has only to recognise the quality of education provided by ILEA, which employs about 50 per cent. more staff per pupil than any other local authority, to see what I mean. I do not accept the correlation. I am astonished that the hon. Gentleman does not recognise the substantial contribution which the Government are making in the inner cities through the programme and partnership authorities and through other designated districts to provide the support for inner city regeneration, which the hon. Gentleman and many of his hon. Friends wish to see.

Mr. Forman: Is it not vital for local authority manpower to be used in the most efficient way? Is my right hon. Friend aware that, through legislation, other Departments often put on local authorities fresh statutory obligations which are not sufficiently taken into account in the rate support grant settlement?

Mr. Jenkin: I understand my hon. Friend's point. The local authority associations make the same point to us. The additional staffing required for any of the new duties placed upon local authorities is minute compared with the total volume of local authority staffing and expenditure. Moreover, a large number of authorities have managed to continue the downward trend in manpower, as requested by the Government, while taking on board new duties, such as the statutory sick pay scheme and the unified housing benefit.

Mr. Eastham: The Secretary of State seems to be boasting about the services provided by the inner cities. Is he aware of the sheer misery caused by transferring to local authorities extra duties such as providing rent subsidies? Local authorities are being compelled to take on thousands of workers because of the frustration and misery caused by the transfer of duties to the local town halls.

Mr. Jenkin: The hon. Gentleman does not help his case by massive exaggeration. This is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services. The Government are aware that in some areas the transition to the new unified housing benefit has been accompanied by some difficulties. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and his Under-Secretary of State are aware of the problem and are working on it.

Mr. Latham: Is my right hon. Friend aware that some hon. Members on the Government Benches need to be convinced that another reorganisation of local government will not mean more bureaucrats, or the same number of bureaucrats doing the same jobs for more pay, but under different names?

Mr. Jenkin: My hon. Friend should recognise that the monitoring and controls which we shall ask the House to accept when we introduce legislation go further than anything that has been done in any previous reorganization

of local government. Ratepayers will expect nothing else in the light of experience. We are determined to ensure that my hon. Friend's anxieties are not justified.

Rating Reform

Mr. Powley: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what representations he has received on the White Paper on rating reform.

Mr. Patrick Jenkin: I have received a large number of representations, which express a wide variety of opinions.

Mr. Powley: I am obliged to my right hon. Friend for that answer, but does he share my view that although there will be an obligation to consult representatives of business and commerce before fixing the rate level, as suggested in the White Paper in paragraph 5.15, many Labour-controlled local authorities will continue to ignore those representations, as they have done in the past, without regard to the implications of so fixing the rate level?

Mr. Jenkin: There is a limit to how far we can go through legislation, but a great many local authorities now have satisfactory arrangements for consulting business opinion and find it a valuable help when they come to fix their budgets and rates. We intend to make it a statutory obligation to consult, and provisions to that effect will be brought forward in legislation which I shall present to the House at around the turn of the year.

Mr. Cartwright: In view of the considerable support for the principle of a local income tax as a fair and more effective way of paying for local services, will the Secretary of State give an assurance that the coming computerisation of the Inland Revenue will not be carried out in such a way as to make the introduction of a local income tax impossible?

Mr. Jenkin: That is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There are three main drawbacks to the use of a local income tax for local revenue. The Government are committed to reducing the tax on incomes, but that proposal would only have the effect of increasing it. A local income tax would massively increase, even with the help of computers, the staffing required in the Inland Revenue. The option favoured by most supporters of a local income tax would mean deduction of the tax at source by the Inland Revenue and therefore there would be a thin nexus between the payment of tax by the taxpayer and the service that he gets from his local authority.

Mr. Parris: Does my right hon. Friend accept that until local authorities raise locally what they spend and spend no more than they raise this will always be a cliff-hanging operation?

Mr. Jenkin: My hon. Friend will know that my predecessors have successively reduced the proportion of local expenditure that is met by the rate support grant. That has been widely welcomed by many local authorities as increasing local accountability — [Interruption.] I am quoting what was said to me by the chairman of the Association of County Councils. The proposals which I shall discuss with the Consultative Council on Local Government Finance tomorrow provide for a small further reduction in the proportion met by the rate support grant.

Mr. Kaufman: The Secretary of State said that he had received a wide variety of opinions about his White Paper. Which does he regard as the more accurate description of it:
this misconceived piece of legislation",
which is the view of the chairman of the Association of County Councils, whom a moment ago the right hon. Gentleman quoted with approval, who is of course a Conservative, or
totally unacceptable … a major constitutional change which would be a fundamental breach of local democracy and accountability and be wholly unworkable in practice",
which is the view of the Conservative-controlled Association of District Councils?

Mr. Jenkin: I agree with the proposition that
Because of their responsibilities for the management of the economy, Central Government must concern themselves with total local government expenditure and taxation.
That came from the Green Paper of the Government of which the right hon. Gentleman was a member.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, to many Conservative Members, local government taxation based on property valuation is wholly unacceptable, and therefore it is unacceptable to increase the proportion of local government expenditure that is based on an unacceptable system?

Mr. Jenkin: I understand my hon. Friend's anxieties in this regard, but no Government have searched harder for an acceptable alternative to rates. As I said at a distinguished gathering in Blackpool a couple of weeks ago — it was a view that was accepted by the overwhelming majority of those present — we were unable to find a more satisfactory alternative to rates. It remains the least unsatisfactory local tax.

Timber Frame Housing

Mr. Allan Roberts: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment when he expects the Building Research Establishment's report on timber frame housing to be published.

The Minister for Housing and Construction (Mr. Ian Gow): The report was published on 7 September.

Mr. Roberts: I thank the Minister for publishing the report, but does he agree that it does not give timber frame housing a clean bill of health, even though some building contractors have seized upon it to try to justify the use of timber frame housing construction? Is the Minister aware that the report says that 24 further points need full investigation, which the Building Research Establishment is asking the Minister for funds to enable that to be done? Will he provide those funds? Does he agree with the statement in the report that it is too soon after the introduction of this highly insulated system of timber frame building for judgments to be made on the use of timber frame housing? Will he take action to assuage the fears of people now buying houses built with the timber frame system?

Mr. Gow: The report refutes most convincingly some of the wild allegations made by the hon. Gentleman when he sought leave to move the Adjournment of the House on 28 June under Standing Order No. 10. The report found that timber frame housing was performing satisfactorily and that there was no evidence that there were more

problems or greater risks of defects due to deficiencies in design or workmanship than in traditionally constructed houses.

Mr. Watson: Does my hon. Friend agree that many owners of timber frame homes have no worries at all about their structural soundness, but are nonetheless concerned that their market value may decline as a result of recent publicity? Will he therefore take every opportunity to emphasise that the timber frame method of housing construction in the vast majority of cases is a safe, sound and economical method of construction?

Mr. Gow: That was the conclusion of the Building Research Establishment's report. It is fair to point out to the House and to those who own timber frame houses that the system of construction has been in use for many years in the United States, and notably in those parts of the United States where climatic conditions are similar to our own.

Homelessness

Mr. Fisher: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what steps he intends to take to tackle the problem of homelessness.

Mr. Gow: Statutory responsibility for assisting the homeless rests with local authorities, which decide their priorities within the resources, including capital receipts, available for their housing investment programmes. Homelessness is a factor used by my right hon. Friend in determining housing investment programme allocations. Its weighting was increased for the current financial year.
Housing associations also play an important role, providing hostels and shared accommodation for single homeless people; and the development programme which my right hon. Friend has approved for the Housing Corporation this year includes an increased allocation of £31 million for this purpose.
My Department continues to provide grant-aid to voluntary bodies helping the homeless.

Mr. Fisher: When the Minister has finished washing his hands of the problems of the homeless in this country, will he consider providing some extra money to help them with their problems? In particular, when he is determining HIP allocations, will he consider increasing loan sanctions to local authorities with particular needs in this respect?

Mr. Gow: I think that the hon. Gentleman prepared his supplementary before he heard my answer. The Government are well aware of the special problems of the homeless. That is why we have taken the measures that I announced in my answer.

Mr. Winnick: When will the Minister recognise that allowing local authorities to build only a few council dwellings increases homelessness? Are the Government not ashamed of the fact that for two to three years the amount of council house building has remained at the same level as in the 1920s? When will the Minister accept responsibility for the tens of thousands of people who are unable to resolve their housing problems for the reasons that I have stated?

Mr. Gow: I am happy to report that housing starts in the public sector this year are significantly higher than they were in the comparable period last year.

Mr. Alton: I welcome the Minister's announcement that the total amount of money available for homelessness is to be increased in the present financial year, but will he give some indication of whether next year's public expenditure cuts are likely to have any impact on that programme? Will he look again at the general needs index, which is used in determining the funds available to housing associations, because some voluntary groups, which do magnificent work in this sphere, fear that much of their money is being siphoned off into other parts of the country where the problems are perhaps not so great as in their own?

Mr. Gow: The general needs index is reviewed each year, and this is the time of year when that is done. My right hon. Friend will make a statement as soon as possible about expenditure next year.

Pressure Groups (Grants)

Mr. Brandon-Bravo: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will introduce measures to restrict the power of local authorities to give grants to pressure groups.

Mr. Patrick Jenkin: I am aware of the concern about the grants that some local authorities are making and have the matter under review.

Mr. Brandon-Bravo: As a local councillor, I am as jealous as the next to maintain local power of decision, but does not my right hon. Friend feel that local government, indeed local democracy, is ill-served by the use — or, rather, the misuse — of public funds for overtly party political purposes? Does he agree, for example, that the payment of rent and rates for party political groupings, or grants to "Women"—even "Babies Against the Bomb"—is not a proper function of local government and in some way should be discouraged and deplored?

Mr. Jenkin: My hon. Friend has put clearly the dilemma we face, because there is great value in many of the payments that are made from the free 2p. Under section 137, many valuable voluntary bodies are supported and payments go to the support of industry and the urban programme. The problem is the misuse of that power by some authorities for purposes which were never remotely within the contemplation of Parliament when the power was put on the statute book, and that is why I am reviewing the matter. As for party political bodies, if it is an overtly party political body it is clear to me that that would be outwith the scope of the section. The problem is that some activities are carried on under other banners that have a strong party political flavour, and that can be a very difficult matter.

Mr. Steen: Will my right hon. Friend encourage local authorities to give grants to groups that are concerned with the prevention of urban sprawl, that want to encourage the halt of green field site expansion and that wish to see some of the statutory undertakers sell some of the 75,000 acres of land that they are not using? Does he agree that this is an important task, even if it may conflict with some local planning officials views?

Mr. Jenkin: We give a good deal of support in one way or another to voluntary bodies that are concerned with the conservation of the countryside and the preservation of wildlife and so on. I am currently reviewing the way in

which we marshall the amount of support we give under various statutory powers, and I take note of my hon. Friend's remarks. He will recognise the value of the register of sites, which my predecessor set up, in bringing on to the market, and making available for builders, the large number of sites that are in public ownership and that public authorities of all sorts are now being obliged to disgorge. I intend to continue that policy and, if necessary, will be prepared to use my powers under the Act to make sure that the land is brought on to the market.

Mr. Dubs: Even if the Secretary of State does not like certain pressure groups which may receive support from local authorities, would it not be better if he left the judgment about making such grants to these pressure groups to the good sense of the electorate, rather than seek to interfere into yet another area of local government activity?

Mr. Jenkin: That is clearly a point of view that will be borne in mind in the course of the review. There is no doubt that there has been some abuse of section 137 which has caused widespread concern and dismay, but people are not satisfied that this is the sort of issue on which an entire local election would turn.

Conservation and Environmental Protection

Mr. Kirkwood: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list those bodies he has met during the summer adjournment regarding conservation and environmental protection matters.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. William Waldegrave): During the recess my right hon. Friend and his colleagues met a wide range of bodies with interests in conservation and environmental protection. I will, with permission, publish the full list in the Official Report.

Mr. Kirkwood: I am grateful for that reply. Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the mounting concern in areas such as Cumbria and southern Scotland about the increasing level of acidity in the natural rainfall in those areas? Does he agree that there is an urgent need to consult scientific and other groups concerned with this important subject? Does he further agree that the Government should take urgent steps to increase research to study and monitor this problem?

Mr. Waldegrave: I am grateful for the responsible way in which the hon. Gentleman put the question, because research is what is needed first. We are increasing the resources for research. We are full participants in the United Nations convention on long-range transboundary air pollution. Britain is the only country in Europe which in every decade since 1940 has quite dramatically decreased the amount of sulphur dioxide put into the atmosphere. Some progress has been made, but much more needs to be done.

Sir Hector Monro: Is the Minister aware that the Nature Conservancy Council much appreciated his visit to its meeting in September, was delighted to hear of his personal interest in conservation and wildlife and knows that he will work closely with the council in the future? Is he further aware that the October meeting of the council was held in Scotland and that the council is giving careful and detailed consideration to the problems of acid rain?

Mr. Waldegrave: I greatly enjoyed my first visit to the NCC and I look forward to enjoying many more. I knew that the subject was coming up at the meeting in Scotland. All the different bodies involved — scientific, nature conservation and the scientists in my Departments—will be increasing their effort and concentration on this subject.

Mr. Bell: May I refer the Under-Secretary to a statement made yesterday by the Secretary of State concerning the people of Cleveland? He spoke of conservation and environmental protection matters. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the people of Cleveland will look with great interest at the list of bodies that were consulted this summer, in particular to see whether consultation took place with the Nuclear Industry Radioactive Waste Executive? They will be asking whether the environmental protection of Cleveland will be taken into consideration when considering placing nuclear waste in the bowels of the earth at Cleveland. I refer the Minister—

Hon. Members: "No."

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member should not refer the Minister to anything. He should ask him a question.

Mr. Bell: When the Minister looks into the environmental protection of the Cleveland area, will he take into account the national interest and will he look elsewhere for a site for the placement of nuclear waste?

Mr. Waldegrave: The question is ranging rather widely. My right hon. Friend said yesterday that there would be the full inquiry process—probably of two public inquiries—and he has placed in the Library of the House a consultative document dealing with the broad national criteria that will be necessary for any licensing of nuclear disposal sites. The interests of the inhabitants of Cleveland, not only on environmental aspects but on many others, must and will be dealt with at those inquiries.

Mr. Kenneth Carlisle: Does my hon. Friend accept that most conservation bodies are deeply worried by the present system for the cost benefit analysis of drainage schemes? As these analyses are kept secret, the conservation bodies have no means of judging them and there are grave doubts whether the correct factors are taken into account. For the benefit of conservation, will my hon. Friend work with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to see that there is an improvement?

Mr. Waldegrave: I shall consult my colleagues in that Ministry and return to my hon. Friend on the subject.

Mr. Denis Howell: Will the Minister confirm that one of the organisations that met Ministers during the recess was the Council for National Parks, which wished to discuss with them the report of the Brotherton committee, which had said that on national park bodies and similar organisations the interests of environment, conservation and recreation were under-represented compared with those of agriculture and land-owning? What response does the Minister intend to make to that representation?

Mr. Waldegrave: I met the Council for National Parks and discussed with it the Brotherton report, which criticised the Government of which the right hon. Gentleman was a member for appointing retired Labour politicians, and criticised us for appointing, in its view, too many agriculturists. We had a full-ranging discussion

of the matter, but it must be remembered that there has not been one appointment that the Countryside Commission has not approved under either Government.

Following is the list:


Meetings between DoE Ministers regarding environmental/ conservation matters during the Parliamentary recess.


Date
Body


Secretary of State



September 8
Historic Buildings Council


September 13
Mr. Nicholas Hinton (Director, National Council for Voluntary Organisations)


September 19*
Countryside Commission


September 20
Joint Committee of Heritage Amenity Societies


September 27
Historic Houses Association


October 5
Chairman of Development Commission


October 20
Chemical Industries Association


Mr. Gow



August 31
Severn-Trent Water Authority


September 9
Anglian Water Authority


September 9
Northamptonshire Naturalist Trust


Mr. Waldegrave



September 1
Peak District National Park


September 7
Severn Trent Water Authority


September 15
National Farmers Union


September 21
Nature Conservancy Council


September 27
British Veterinary Association


October 6
Nature Conservancy Council


October 6
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds


October 10
Professor Ashworth—Salford University Pollution Control Advisory Service


October 19
Council for National Parks


Sir George Young



September 7
Centenary Congress of the Institution of Environmental Health Officers


September 19
Building Conservation Exhibition


* Mr. Waldegrave was also present at this meeting.

Metropolitan Green Belt

Mr. Chapman: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he intends to propose any changes to the metropolitan green belt areas.

Mr. Patrick Jenkin: In the recent draft circular about green belts it is expressly reaffirmed that the essential characteristic of green belts is that their permanence and their protection should be long term. I stand firmly by that statement.
If green belt policy is to be successful, however, it is important that local planning authorities should, when drawing detailed green belt boundaries, make provision for necessary future development.

Mr. Chapman: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that statement. Does he accept that there has been great consternation as a result of the draft circular that he issued during the summer? Does he agree that the best way forward would be to ask any authority, if it feels that it has land in the green belts that is suitable for development, publicly to declare sites that can be developed so that the merits of every site may be examined? Does he accept that the final circular should be confined to extolling the success of our green belt policies and reminding the public of the need for eternal vigilance in protecting them?

Mr. Jenkin: I shall want carefully to examine my hon. Friend's proposal. I hope that my statement is absolutely clear. I am as committed as any of my predecessors to


preserving a strong and clear green belt policy. The Government have extended the approved green belt in the metropolitan area, especially in Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire, and in other areas such as Merseyside, Hampshire, Tyne and Wear and Nottingham. The extent of the London green belt has been increased by about 45 per cent. since 1979 and now measures about 1·2 million acres. As The Times clearly stated in response to the draft circular:
There is a case for revision of green belt boundaries; considerable tracts of the land are neither green (used for agriculture or accessible open space) nor much of a worthwhile girdle.
If we want the policy to survive, we must ensure that the detailed boundaries that are drawn are clear and defensible and can be maintained in the long term.

Mr. Park: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, rather than encroach further on the green belt, it would make more sense to provide more money for derelict land clearance, especially in areas such as the west midlands?

Mr. Jenkin: We have substantially increased the amount of money that is available for derelict land clearance and I hope that that programme will continue. It is essential that it should do so if it is to bring into reuse some of the land that has been left derelict by former industrial and other enterprises. However, it would be unreal to imagine that all our housing and development needs for the foreseeable future could be met in that way alone. The problem is to balance the needs of future development with the Government's clear desire to preserve a strong, firm, clear and permanent green belt policy.

Mr. Richard Page: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the concern and worry that the draft circular has created within Hertfordshire, especially in my constituency of Hertfordshire, South-West? What value and what weight is now to be attached to the county structure plans dealing with housing?

Mr. Jenkin: Where detailed boundaries have already been drawn up in local plans following a county structure plan, there is no suggestion that the boundaries should be redrawn. The circular is directing attention to instances where broad green belt areas have been designated in county structure plans and where the local plans have still to be drawn. That will be a relatively small matter, but it recommended that when drawing up these plans the local planning authorities should have regard to the essential needs of future development. If that is not done, I have to tell my hon. Friend that one will be driven eventually to breaking the green belt boundaries, which is the last thing that anyone wants to see happen.

Mr. Hardy: Will the right hon. Gentleman make it clear that green belt land does not have to be intensively farmed to secure his approval? Will he also make it clear that if the green belt in the metropolitan counties is diminished, the chances of development within the conurbations, which may be more desirable, will be considerably lessened, which will not be in anyone's interests?

Mr. Jenkin: Much of the misunderstanding is on the part of those who have not read the relevant paragraphs in the circular, and that can be said of some of the press comments. I accept the argument of the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy), and there is no suggestion that

the draft circular, which remains a draft, is proposing anything other than the most modest changes to meet particular difficulties that have arisen. We want to make sense of green belt policy so that it can be permanent, or at least long term. The policy is an essential part of the structure of our planning system and I am still considering many of the representations that I have received.

Dr. David Clark: It can perhaps be accepted that the draft circular in itself is modest, but it becomes most worrying when read alongside the draft circular on housing land release. Does the Minister appreciate how benefits have accrued to the nation in both rural and urban areas as a result of green belt policies that have been created and implemented by successive Governments since the war? Does he understand that there are many on both sides of the House who feel that there are some things that are more important than mere speculators' profits? Will he now withdraw the draft circular?

Mr. Jenkin: That which the hon. Gentleman refers to as speculators' profits could well represent houses for those who want to have a home of their own. It does not help the argument to indulge in smears of that sort. There is a problem, but I have repeated firmly and clearly the Government's firm commitment to a long-term green belt policy. As I have said, the London green belt has been enlarged by about 45 per cent. over the past four years. That should be a token of the Government's concern. I shall take account of the anxieties that have been expressed on both sides of the House before I decide how further to proceed with the circular.

Falkland Islands

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will give the lastest cost estimates for the construction of the runway and the associated housing for air facilities in the Falkland Islands.

Mr. Gow: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence on 27 June. Our latest estimate of the value of the work on the airfield and associated RAF facilities is £190 million.

Mr. Dalyell: Is the Minister not aware, from his visit to the Falklands in the congenial company of my hon. Friend the Member for Cunninghame, South (Mr. Lambie) in 1978, that the geology is very difficult? Is he coy about giving the House the figure of £370 million?

Mr. Gow: I recall the visit that I made in the company of the hon. Member for Cunninghame, South (Mr. Lambie). I am not in the least coy about giving the facts to the hon. Gentleman. The figure today is the same as the figure that was given by my right hon. Friend before the summer recess. It is £190 million.

System Building

Mr. Blair: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will recompense tenants in local authority-owned houses built by the Bison group of companies for problems of dampness from which they suffer.

Mr. Litherland: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will order a public inquiry into Bison timber frame and other system building.

Sir George Young: Claims on account of dampness are not a matter for my right hon. Friend, but for tenants to take up with their local authority landlords. While my right hon. Friend has no plans to order a public inquiry into any type of system-built housing, we have asked local authorities to satisfy themselves, if they have not already done so, that Bison wall frame houses and flats do not present a safety risk.

Mr. Blair: Does the Minister accept that it is wrong that local authorities should shoulder the burden of repairing houses that suffer from inherent structural defects when local government has often used these types of houses at the behest of central Government?

Sir George Young: If the authorities are in subsidy, they will receive help in remedying the defects to which the hon. Gentleman has referred. If they are not in subsidy, it would be wrong to take away resources from authorities that may be less well off to tackle the defects that have been described. If an authority is not in subsidy, it is because the Government take the view that there are adequate resources within the authority to enable it to pay for the remedying of the defects.

Mr. Litherland: Does the Minister accept that there is an overwhelming demand for a public inquiry, and that to deny that inquiry to taxpayers, ratepayers and tenants generally, who have had to live in this appalling housing, would once again be an example of the Government's willingness to abdicate their responsibilities to the British people?

Sir George Young: We have no plans to launch a public inquiry into a system that was discontinued many years ago. More important is the need to ascertain what is wrong with the buildings and to take steps to put right the defects. That is what we have encouraged local authorities to do. We hope to be able to offer some assistance with some help from the Building Research Establishment.

Mr. Tim Smith: Is my hon. Friend aware that a recent "World in Action" programme on the subject offered a complete travesty of the facts, and that, following that programme, Salford council extracted an apology from "World in Action" on behalf of its tenants, in whom unjustified fears had been aroused? Is it not true that there has been no successful legal action against Bison? In that case, is not compensation or a public inquiry unjustified?

Sir George Young: My hon. Friend is right. If the local authority felt that it should take legal action against Bison, it would be free to pursue it in the courts. My hon. Friend is right. That has not yet been done.

Mr. Meadowcroft: Is the Minister aware that tenants who have bought timber frame houses under Government legislation are now facing huge bills for repairs? Therefore, will he permit the local authorities to give them grant-aid to carry out the necessary work?

Sir George Young: We have announced an inquiry into some types of buildings built by local authorities and then purchased by tenants, mainly using pre-cast reinforced concrete. We are not aware of the substantial problem that the hon. Gentleman outlined. Perhaps he will let me have further details.

Wessex Water Authority

Mr. Adley: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will hold a meeting with the chairman of the Wessex water authority to discuss capital expenditure by the authority.

Mr. Waldegrave: I expect to meet all the chairmen of the English water authorities individually during December, when we will discuss their authorities' financial prospects for 1984–85.

Mr. Adley: I thank my hon. Friend for his reply. Is he aware that twice in recent years the river Stour has caused serious flooding in Christchurch and that many of my constituents cannot disabuse themselves of the idea that it is due to work done by the water authority to straighten out the river and so on? Is he further aware that in discussions that I have had with the water authority I have found that there is difficulty in assessing the work that can be allocated to capital resources, which is causing confusion, probably due to legislation passed in the House rather than to the water authority's shortcomings? Will my hon. Friend consider that matter?

Mr. Waldegrave: I am aware of the problem, as my hon. Friend has been assiduous in bringing it to the attention of my predecessor and myself. The chairman of the water authority has had meetings with some of the district councils concerned to investigate and draw up plans. I shall investigate my hon. Friend's point.

Mr. Denis Howell: Is the Minister aware that a study of the appointments that he has made to this and every other regional water authority, in which the chairman receive a salary of £24,000 and the member's salary is £9,000, shows blatant political bias? Every one of those regional water authorities is packed with Conservatives in whom we can have no confidence. Furthermore, is it not disgraceful that the first act of every one of those water authorities was deliberately to exclude the press from attendance at any of their meetings? Does not that justify the criticism that he is supplanting local democracy with "watercrats" and creating a centralised bureaucracy, to which we have every right to object?

Mr. Waldegrave: I strongly refute the implication of the right hon. Gentleman's first point. The chairman of the north-west water authority is a Labour councillor and there are two other Labour councillors on it. There is at least one other Labour chairman. He is a distinguished chairman, appointed on his merits, and previously was a Labour councillor. Political bias has in no way entered into those appointments.

Gipsy Sites

Mr. Greenway: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what criteria he follows in designating official gipsy sites; and if he will make a statement.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Neil Macfarlane): The responsibility for providing official gipsy sites rests with the local authorities concerned, who have a statutory duty under the Caravan Sites Act 1968 to provide adequate accommodation for the gipsies residing in or resorting to their area. Advice on


statutory procedures, alternative forms of gipsy accommodation and practical matters affecting site provision and management is contained in DOE circular 28/77, a copy of which is in the Library.

Mr. Greenway: Will my hon. Friend take powers to seek to amend legislation under which gipsy sites can be forced into overbuilt and overpopulated areas such as Northolt at a cost to public funds of £500,000 for a 15-caravan site? Will he do so bearing in mind the fact that the people coming on to those sites are mostly not honest didicois but tinkers, and are unacceptable to the local community, which they often disturb seriously?

Mr. Macfarlane: I have no plans to amend the Caravan Sites Act 1968. It is important that the House should understand that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State always relies on the advice on the selection of appropriate sites given by the local authorities.

Mr. Corbett: Will the Minister talk to West Midlands county council about the itinerant gipsy site at Tameside drive in Castle Vale, in Birmingham, which boasts a row of pylons on one side, a pellet-making plant on another and the M6 on the third side? Does he agree that residents on that site face a health hazard?

Mr. Macfarlane: I am unaware of the details of that site. I take note of what the hon. Gentleman says. No doubt he will write to me more fully with details. If it is a designated site, it will have been selected by the local authority. I need more details to be able to answer more fully.

Mr. Key: Does my hon. Friend agree that the major problem with gipsies lies not with the traditional gipsies but the so-called "new age" gipsies or the so-called "peace convoy" gipsies who have moved around the country, particularly during the summer, in ever-increasing numbers and who are apparently outwith the law?

Mr. Macfarlane: My hon. Friend has made an important point. It is a serious problem affecting many parts of England and Wales. That is why my Department initiated a discussion paper last year. We are still looking at its recommendations. No doubt I shall receive further advice in due course.

Mr. Cartwright: In view of the considerable nuisance suffered regularly by many Londoners due to travellers' caravans parked on council estates and so on, when will the Minister do something effective to help councils which have more that met their obligations under the Caravan Sites Act 1968, yet still suffer from those regular problems?

Mr. Macfarlane: The hon. Gentleman has raised an important point. If the local authority has designated sites and provided the appropriate number of pitches in the area, the local police have powers. That is a matter for the local chief of police and the local authority.

Woodlands and Green Space

Mr. Freeson: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if his Department will take steps to encourage the provision of additional woodlands and green space in the inner city areas.

Sir George Young: My Department already encourages the development of green space and tree planting

in the inner city. The amount of resources devoted to such environmental improvements under the urban programme in partnership and programme authorities has risen from £11 million in 1980–81 to some £20 million in 1983–84.

Mr. Freeson: Does the Minister agree that, compared with the expenditure of about £18,000 million a year in local government, the figures that he has quoted for improving the environment and greening it are paltry? Does he agree also that one of the best ways to avoid the pressures on the green belt, referred to earlier, and to avoid pressures to build more housing estates way out in the countryside in the outer metropolitan areas, would be to have a massive drive to green the cities and create the environment and decent surroundings in which people have their homes?

Sir George Young: The figures may be small in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman, but they are double what he spent when he was a Minister in the Department. I agree that we must aim to make the inner cities more attractive for people to live and work in. I have recently approved environmental improvements under the urban programme in the London borough of Brent.

Mr. Steen: Would it not be better to halt the expansion on the urban fringe, with 60,000 acres of green field sites disappearing every year, and to fill the land on the register, of which there are currently 100,000 acres which are dormant or empty, or the 250,000 acres throughout the country which the Civic Trust says is idle?

Sir George Young: I would not dissent from my hon. Friend's broad proposition.

Council Rents

Mr. Straw: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what has been the increase in money and in percentage in the average level of council rents since May 1979.

Sir George Young: Average council house rents, in England and Wales, are estimated to have increased by £7·65 or 120 per cent. between April 1979 and April 1983.

Mr. Straw: Do not the figures that the Minister has given represent a shameful example of the Government's double standards, when they give money away to the rich and penalise the poor by forcing up council rents by more than twice the rate of inflation? Is the Minister aware that in many Conservative local authorities profits from council rents, which have doubled under the Government, are being used to subsidise better-off ratepayers? Does he condone that practice, or will he stamp it out?

Sir George Young: The double standards come entirely from the Opposition, who said that their policy was to increase rents in line with earnings but refused steadfastly to do so during their period in office. The sharp increases that I have described were necessary because the Opposition ducked the difficult decisions that they should have taken. The actual increase in council rents for this year is working out at about 40p per week—about a 3 per cent. increase—which is the lowest increase in rents for 10 years.

Mr. Eggar: Is it not the case that council house tenants who purchased their houses when the Government came into office are actually paying less for their mortgages than others are paying in rent?

Sir George Young: That may well be the case, and it shows the sense of the policy to which we are both committed.

Oral Answers to Questions — BILLS PRESENTED

PROHIBITION OF FEMALE CIRCUMCISION (No. 2)

Mr. Clement Freud presented a Bill to prohibit female circumcision: And the same was read the first time; and ordered to be read a second time upon Friday 25 November and to be printed. [Bill 42.]

POLICE AND CRIMINAL EVIDENCE

Mr. Secretary Brittan, supported by Mr. Secretary Prior, Mr. Secretary Heseltine, Mr. Secretary Younger, Mr. Secretary Edwards, Mr. Attorney-General, Mr. Douglas Hurd and Mr. Barney Hayhoe presented a Bill to make further provision in relation to the powers and duties of the police, criminal evidence, police discipline and complaints against the police; to provide for arrangements for obtaining the views of the community on policing and for a rank of deputy chief constable; to amend the law relating to the Police Federations and Police Forces and Police Cadets in Scotland; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the first time; and ordered to read a second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 44.]

TRADE UNION

Mr. Secretary King, supported by Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Secretary Brittan, Mr. John Biffen, Mr. Secretary Tebbit, Mr. Secretary Younger, Mr. Secretary Edwards, Mr. John Selwyn Gummer and Mr. Alan Clark, presented a Bill to make provision for election to certain positions in trade unions and with respect to ballots held in connection with strikes or other forms of industrial action; and to amend the law relating to expenditure by trade unions on political objects: And the same was read the first time; and ordered to be read a second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 43.]

Control of Dog Nuisance

Mr. Tony Marlow: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to protect the public from some aspects of dog nuisance by the introduction of limited controls.
May I say how appropriate it is that I should follow the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, North-East (Mr. Freud). I mean him no harm.
As any hon. Member who has put his head into the kennel and involved himself in canine politics will know, he is asking for trouble, if only from his secretary, who will be deluged and overwhelmed by a Niagara of correspondence. Canophilia and canophobia are both very powerful emotions because most of us consider, quite rightly, the dog to be man's best friend.
It is easy to underestimate the concern, the inconvenience and the downright nuisance caused by stray and latch key dogs which are spawned by a minority of irresponsible dog owners. We can all imagine—perhaps some of us even remember—the terror of an elderly person or a child out on an errand who is suddenly confronted by a wild and unpredictable Alsatian. We should also consider the problems facing a blind person walking in one of our inner city parks and not knowing what each footfall may bring or how to cope with the filthy result, or a mother taking her child to school or to the local shops dancing along the pavement, not from joy but from hygienic necessity. Imagine the hell of living next door to an ill-treated dog yapping and howling every one of 24 hours. Imagine what it must be like to be a teenager on the threshold of adult life who suddenly discovers that he is losing his sight in one eye which is affected by toxicana canis from someone else's uncared-for dog.
The Government have long been aware of the problems and of the depth of public concern. The facts are that each year 10,000 farm animals are savaged, two-thirds of which die. More than 100,000 bitten patients are treated in our hospitals each year. Hundreds of thousands of ill-fed, unkempt, miserable strays are, sadly, put down. Fifty cases are known each year of severe eye damage from toxicana canis, and the total is probably much more.
So far, the Government have not seen fit to act, constrained by a variety of political considerations, some good. Certainly it may be imprudent, and I hope uncharacteristic, for this Government to increase directly the burden of central levies and taxation and to establish a centralised bureaucratic apparatus for the control of dog nuisance, but there is a way forward. The problem is very much local. In some areas there is a much greater problem than in others. In some areas the perception of the problem and the solution which could be required would be quite different from that in other areas.
I believe that the solution is to let local communities decide. I suggest, first, that we should do away with the anachronism whereby the police are responsible for strays. I am sure that the Police Federation and chief constables would be delighted. The responsibility should be transferred to district authorities, but it would be wrong to burden any institution with duties without giving it the wherewithal to carry out those duties.
I propose that we should have a flexible licence, running, say, between £1 to perhaps £8, £9, or even £10,

with the level of the licence to be decided by each district authority within its own area and all the money so raised to be spent on the control and welfare of dogs. I believe that there should be an exception for the blind, for whom a licence should be free and, certainly, there should be safeguards for pensioners.
At the lower level, there would be sufficient funds to administer the system and to provide a register of licensed dogs. At the higher level, it would be possible to sustain a regime of dog wardens with responsibility for the control of strays, for enforcing the licence take-up — at the moment only half the dogs in this country are licensed — and for seeing that the streets and parks are kept clean from the foul mess that they currently have on and in them.
We would be able to organise and supervise kennels for the welfare and the recycling of stray dogs. We would be able to provide special provisions for dogs, particularly in our parks. I believe that such a solution would be acceptable to the Association of District Councils, as it would be to the RSPCA. Most responsible dog owners would be happy to pay a higher licence fee to reduce the hardship and the cruelty suffered by so many of our dogs, and to enable us to take action against the irresponsible owners who besmirch the reputation of dogs as a whole.
One final point. Many dogs are bought on impulse—the appealing puppy which is purchased for the family at Christmas often becomes a savage stray by summertime. I think that the more deliberate purchase of a pet would ensure the better keeping and looking after of that pet. I therefore believe that it would be appropriate to ensure that a licence is acquired before the dog is acquired.
The measure is concerned with the welfare of dogs and the peace of mind of our people. I ask for its support.

Mr. Andrew Bowden: I rise to oppose the Bill. I declare my interest immediately. My wife and I own a dog, although I suspect that the dog owns us. There are no problem dogs—there are only problem owners.
I am utterly opposed to the recycling of dogs, as suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Northamptonshire, North (Mr. Marlow). The Bill is part of my hon. Friend's campaign to bring into Great Britain the terrible Dogs (Northern Ireland) Order, which is draconian, and anti-dog. Under that order, dogs causing apprehension can be destroyed. On that basis, there would not be many left.
As to my hon. Friend's crackpot suggestion that we should let local authorities decide the level of the dog licence, between £1 and £10, that would be a bureaucratic dream or a bureaucratic nightmare. Are we really suggesting that we should have the situation where Mrs. Jones' dog on one side of the road pays £10 and Mr. Smith's dog, on the other side of the road, pays only £l?
The measure is ill-considered. It would be unfair on all dog owners. I repeat—there are no irresponsible dogs, only irresponsible dog owners.
I accept that of the 6·5 million dog owners a small minority do not keep their dogs under control but allow them to foul the pavements or to run wild, which is utterly unacceptable in our society. They should be fined very heavily indeed. If, in all our constituencies, every irresponsible dog owner was fined £50 for fouling the


streets — [Laughter.] That would be £50 for the dog and, if necessary, £100 for the owner. That would solve the problem overnight.
Let us abolish the dog licence. We do not want a Swansea for dogs; a Swansea for vehicles is bad enough. Let us have stringent byelaws to penalise those who do not keep dogs under control.
Dogs provide companionship and comfort for millions of our fellow citizens. It may seem incredible, but there is strong medical evidence that they provide great benefits. A person is less likely to have a heart attack if he owns a dog, he will make a quicker recovery from illness and there are many other benefits. The proposed Bill will solve nothing. It is a bureaucrat's dream. I ask the House to reject it.

Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 15 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business):

The House divided: Aves 173. Noes 47.

Division No. 49]
[3.40 pm


AYES


Alexander, Richard
Fraser, J. (Norwood)


Alton, David
Freud, Clement


Anderson, Donald
Garrett, W. E.


Ashdown, Paddy
Glyn, Dr Alan


Ashton, Joe
Gourlay, Harry


Barron, Kevin
Gower, Sir Raymond


Batiste, Spencer
Greenway, Harry


Beckett, Mrs Margaret
Gregory, Conal


Beith, A. J.
Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)


Bell, Stuart
Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)


Bellingham, Henry
Hannam,John


Bennett, A. (Denfn &amp; Red'sh)
Hargreaves, Kenneth


Bennett, Sir Frederic (T'bay)
Hayward, Robert


Bermingham, Gerald
Hicks, Robert


Bonsor, Sir Nicholas
Hind, Kenneth


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Holt, Richard


Boyes, Roland
Home Robertson, John


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)


Bruinvels, Peter
Hubbard-Miles, Peter


Buck, Sir Antony
Hughes, Mark (Durham)


Caborn, Richard
Hughes, Roy (Newport East)


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Hughes, Simon (Southwark)


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)


Cartwright, John
Hunter, Andrew


Chapman, Sydney
Irving, Charles


Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)
Jones, Barry (Alyn &amp; Deeside)


Clay, Robert
Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)


Cohen, Harry
Kennedy, Charles


Coleman, Donald
Key, Robert


Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)
King, Roger (B'ham N'field)


Coombs, Simon
Knight, Gregory (Derby N)


Corbyn, Jeremy
Knight, Mrs Jill (Edgbaston)


Couchman, James
Knowles, Michael


Cox, Thomas (Tooting)
Knox, David


Crowther, Stan
Lamond, James


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)


Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'ge H'l)
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)


Deakins, Eric
Lightbown, David


Dickens, Geoffrey
Litherland, Robert


Dicks, T.
Lloyd, Peter, (Fareham)


Dixon, Donald
Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)


Dobson, Frank
Lord, Michael


Dubs, Alfred
McDonald, Dr Oonagh


Edwards, R. (W'hampt'n SE)
McKay, Allen (Penistone)


Evennett, David
Maclean, David John.


Fallon, Michael
McQuarrie, Albert


Favell, Anthony
McTaggart, Robert


Field, Frank (Birkenhead)
Maples, John


Flannery, Martin
Marek, Dr John


Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)
Marlow, Antony


Foster, Derek
Marshall, David (Shettleston)


Fox, Marcus
Martin, Michael





Maxton, John
Soley, Clive


Meadowcroft, Michael
Speller, Tony


Merchant, Piers
Spence, John


Mikardo, Ian
Steel, Rt Hon David


Miller, Hal (B'grove)
Steen, Anthony


Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)
Stevens, Martin (Fulham)


Molyneaux, Rt Hon James
Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)


Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)
Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)


Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Murphy, Christopher
Temple-Morris, Peter


Needham, Richard
Thompson, J. (Wansbeck)


Nicholls, Patrick
Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)


Norris, Steven
Thorne, Neil (Ilford S)


Onslow, Cranley
Thurnham, Peter


Ottaway, Richard
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Owen, Rt Hon Dr David
Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.


Park, George
Viggers, Peter


Penhaligon, David
Wainwright, R.


Pike, Peter
Wall, Sir Patrick


Powley, John
Wallace, James


Price, Sir David
Walters, Dennis


Raffan, Keith
Ward, John


Richardson, Ms Jo
Wardle, C. (Bexhill)


Roberts, Allan (Bootle)
Wareing, Robert


Robertson, George
Watson, John


Robinson, Mark (N'port W)
Weetch, Ken


Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)
White, James


Rowe, Andrew
Whitfield, John


Sackville, Hon Thomas
Wilson, Gordon


St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Sayeed, Jonathan
Winterton, Nicholas


Sheerman, Barry
Woodcock, Michael


Shelton, William (Streatham)



Shersby, Michael
Tellers for the Ayes:


Sims, Roger
Mr. Jack Aspinwall and Mr. Den Dover


Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)



Smyth, Rev W. M. (Belfast S)





NOES


Ashby, David
Michie, William


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Monro, Sir Hector


Bryan, Sir Paul
Morris, M. (N'hampton, S)


Campbell, Ian
O'Brien, William


Carlisle, Rt Hon M. (W'ton S)
Powell, Rt Hon J. E. (S Down)


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Prentice, Rt Hon Reg


Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.
Proctor, K. Harvey


Cook, Frank (Stockton North)
Radice, Giles


Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)
Redmond, M.


Duffy, A. E. P.
Skinner, Dennis


Ellis, Raymond
Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'kl'ds E)


Farr, John
Soames, Hon Nicholas


Foot, Rt Hon Michael
Stanbrook, Ivor


Gale, Roger
Stern, Michael


Gardiner, George (Reigate)
Thorne, Stan (Preston)


Hamilton, James (M'well N)
Tracey, Richard


Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy
Walden, George


Hawkins, C. (High Peak)
Wall, Sir Patrick


Johnson-Smith, Sir Geoffrey
Welsh, Michael


Kershaw, Sir Anthony
Young, David (Bolton SE)


Lofthouse, Geoffrey



MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)
Tellers for the Noes:


Mawhinney, Dr Brian
Mr. Andrew Bowden and Mr. Matthew Parris.


Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

Question accordingly agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Tony Marlow, Mr. Dennis Walters, Mr. Hal Miller, Mr. Clive Soley, Mr. Richard Needham, Mr. John Townend, Mr. Alfred Dubs, Miss Janet Fookes, Mr. Peter Lloyd, Mr. Andrew F. Bennett, Mr. Teddy Taylor and Mr. Neil Hamilton.

CONTROL OF DOG NUISANCE

Mr. Tony Marlow accordingly presented a Bill to protect the public from some aspects of dog nuisance by the introduction of limited controls: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 2 December and to be printed. [Bill 39.]

Unparliamentary Expressions

Mr. Speaker: I have a short statement to make to the House about a breach of order that occurred yesterday. There was a good deal of noise and disturbance during Question Time and I did not myself hear what was said at the time. I am, however, clear, after studying Hansard, that an unparliamentary word was used.
To resolve doubts about the future, I wish to make it plain that it will always be my intention to uphold the rules of order in the House and I take this opportunity, before the opening of an important debate, to make that clear.

Grenada (Invasion)

Mr. Denis Healey: I beg to move, That this House do now adjourn.
When I asked your permission yesterday, Mr. Speaker, to move this motion, I said that the invasion of Grenada appeared to be a violation of the United Nations charter, that it had split the Commonwealth countries of the Caribbean in two and that it raised the most fundamental questions about relations between Britain and her most important ally. Everything that has happened in the past 24 hours confirms the justice of what I then said.
Let me start by quoting an editorial in The Times today —a paper that is not notorious for supporting the sort of views that I put forward. It says:
There is no getting around the fact that the United States and its Caribbean allies have committed an act of aggression against Grenada. They are in breach of international law and the Charter of the United Nations.
I hope that the Foreign Secretary will confirm that judgment when he speaks this afternoon, because international law is the only thing that stands between the world and anarchy.
If Governments arrogate to themselves the right to change the Governments of other sovereign states, there can be no peace in this world in perhaps the most dangerous age which the human race has ever known. It is quite improper for hon. Members to condemn, as we have, the violation of international law by the Soviet Union in its attacks on Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan if we do not apply the same standards to the United States' attack on Grenada two days ago.
The Security Council is meeting at this moment to consider the matter. I want first to ask the Foreign Secretary to assure the House that Her Majesty's Government will put at this meeting a resolution similar in terms to that which was put at the meeting 18 months ago when British territory in an island in another part of the south Atlantic was attacked by another aggressor, and that they will insist on the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Grenada and the immediate cessation of hostilities.
It has become clear in the past 24 hours that, if there is not an immediate withdrawal of foreign troops from Grenada, the fighting may go on for months, if not years. [HON. MEMBERS: "Nonsense."] The Prime Minister of Barbados and the Prime Minister of Dominica have both said on the radio in the past 24 hours—of course they are right—that the island of Grenada is ideal territory for guerrilla warfare. It is already clear that fighting is continuing in many parts of the island. They have both said —I suspect that they know about it as they are directly involved in the operation—that that fighting is likely to continue for at least six months. I hope that Conservative Members who dispute that danger will take some notice of what was said by participants in the conflict.
There can be no denial of the grave damage done to the unity of the Commonwealth by what has happened in the past few days. The Secretary-General made his opposition clear on the radio this morning. Next week the Prime Minister will be meeting her colleagues in New Delhi and there is no question but that this matter is likely to arise. Again, I ask the Foreign Secretary to confirm that in all those Commonwealth discussions the Government will

stand for the principles of international law and make their condemnation of the invasion of Grenada plain for all to see.
I come now to the impact of the invasion on relations between Britain and her most important ally, the United States. I fear that I must start by saying that information that has come to light in the past 24 hours makes it clear that the statements made by the Foreign Secretary on Monday and Tuesday of this week—I bow to the ruling that you made, Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of the debate not to use unparliamentary expressions—were imperfect, disingenuous and lacking in candour.
The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States issued a communique in which it made it clear that its member Governments met last Friday in Barbados and decided then to undertake what was described in the communique as "a pre-emptive defensive strike" against an independent member of the Commonwealth—Grenada—and to seek assistance for this purpose from friendly countries both in the area and outside.
We now know that President Reagan received this request on Friday night last week but we learnt from Prime Minister Adams on the radio at lunchtime today that Her Majesty's Government received this request on Friday night last week. This was stated in the clearest terms by Prime Minister Adams on the radio at 1 o'clock. He also expressed his disappointment that Her Majesty's Government had not acceded to the invitation. The House will want to know how, in the light of this fact, the Foreign Secretary could tell us simply:
There were reports that some members of the smaller group"—
in the Caribbean Commonwealth—
were seeking military support … during the weekend."—[Official Report, 25 October 1983; Vol. 47, c. 147.]
Even more, how could the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, say quite specifically in her statement in the House of Lords on Monday that no approach had been received from Commonwealth countries on this matter at the time when she spoke on Monday afternoon?
I can well imagine that the Foreign Secretary himself chose the formulation in his statement yesterday:
No formal invitation was extended"—[Official Report, 25 October 1983; Vol. 47, c. 147.]
until Monday evening. However, the plain fact is that the Government were approached by the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States on Friday. I gather that I may not say, Mr. Speaker, that the Foreign Secretary was deceiving the House, but he was certainly misleading it in the words that he used; and it is impossible to justify, by any stretch of the meaning of words, the statement of the Minister of State in another place on Monday afternoon.
We now know from what was said in Washington yesterday that the United States began considering military intervention against Grenada as soon as the military coup took place on 13 October, a fortnight ago. Reports from Washington on British television yesterday declared that the CIA had been planning such an operation for months before a coup took place. Indeed, Mr. Bishop—over whose death the President of the United States wept crocodile tears in his statement on Monday—expressed, in an interview on British radio last August, his concern about the imminence of an invasion of Grenada organised by the United States.
Indeed, our Foreign Affairs Select Committee, on examining the situation in the Caribbean 12 months ago, warned the Government of those fears, and the Foreign Office chose not to comment on this part of its report in the answer that it offered to the House last spring.
It is very difficult to resist the suspicion that the United States organised the invitation from the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States so as to justify its invasion. This suspicion is attributed to British officials — from the Foreign Office, I presume—in a report in today's Daily Telegraph, which also attributed to British officials the words that it was seen by the United States as a figleaf for intervention — the same words as were used by the Soviet Government in their statement yesterday.
In any case, reports of a likely intervention by some east Caribbean countries and the United States were widely circulating throughout the Caribbean over the weekend. On Monday, Grenada radio reported in detail the proceedings of CARICOM, when some very important members of the Commonwealth—I mentioned some of them yesterday: Trinidad, the largest Commonwealth country close to Grenada, Belize, which is under threat from Guatemala, and the Bahamas—totally rejected that request.
We know now, too, from reports from Washington yesterday, that the American national security council took a tentative decision to accept the OECS invitation on Sunday evening. Were Her Majesty's Government aware of this? Was the Foreign Secretary aware of it when he told us 24 hours later in this House, on Monday afternoon, that he had no reason to believe that America was contemplating such a step? Either Her Majesty's Government were deceived by their major ally, or Her Majesty's Government were deceiving the House.
The Foreign Secretary told the House yesterday that contacts continued throughout the weekend, but the level at which they continued is very obscure. I suspect that the duty clerk at the Foreign Office was talking to the duty clerk at the British Embassy in Washington. What is disturbing is Senator Larry Pressler's statement on the "Today" programme on British radio this morning that, when the President told certain Congressmen of his intention on Monday, he told them also that the United Kingdom Government were in full support of the policy that he was describing to them. I hope either that Senator Pressler misheard the President or that the President was mistaken. It is very important that the Foreign Secretary should clear this matter up this afternoon.
If one looks through the history not just of the past few days, but of the past 12 months when the possibility of a military attack on an independent Commonwealth state was widely discussed throughout the Caribbean and many other parts of the world ——

Mr. Churchill: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Healey: I will give way in a moment.
When one looks at the history of this affair one must feel that Her Majesty's Government have been guilty here of the same sort of fecklessness as they showed in dealing with the threat of an Argentine invasion of the Falklands 18 months ago. The prime responsibility for that fecklessness must lie with the Prime Minister herself. She has shown a lack of grip, a flaccid indolence, in dealing with a threat to British territory. [Interruption.] She has

failed in her duty to the House. She has failed in her duty to the British people. She has failed in her duty to the Commonwealth, and she has failed in her duty to the Palace. [Interruption.]

Mr. Churchill: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman is not giving way.

Mr. Healey: I should like the Foreign Secretary to tell us whether it is true, as widely reported in the newspapers this morning, that both the Prime Minister and the Palace first heard of the invasion from press reports. Is it also true that a telex from the Government of Grenada announcing the invasion was delivered to an old Foreign Office number which now belongs to a Scandinavian plastics company? [Interruption.] It is difficult to believe that incompetence and lack of grip could go any further. How on earth could the Prime Minister possibly imagine that a couple of minutes on the telephone with President Reagan, when the invasion was already under way, would make any difference?
I hope that the Foreign Secretary will tell us this afternoon what the Prime Minister said to the President during that fraught couple of minutes, and what he said to her. I must confess that my imagination leads me rather in the direction of a dialogue between the Glums.
I turn to the wider implication of what has happened for relations between Britain and the United States of America. The Prime Minister has made something of a cult of her special relationship with the American President at the expense of British interests, of her relations with our European partners and of our relations with the Commonwealth. Indeed, in her recent visit to the United States, she tried to outdo the American President in that astonishing outburst that was so rightly castigated by Lord Carrington a few days later as megaphone diplomacy. Nowhere has her servility to the American President been more evident than on the problems of central America and the Caribbean region. Contrary to all her undertakings at the European summit, she supported the use of force for the solution of the problems of central America although she had signed a communique, along with the other heads of Community Governments, specifically disavowing the use of force as a useful solution to the problems.
The Prime Minister has been an obedient poodle to the American President. [Interruption.] The true state of the relationship was put with brutal clarity by Secretary of State Shultz yesterday when he said:
We are, of course, always impressed with the views of the British Government and Mrs. Thatcher, but that doesn't mean that we always have to agree with them and, of course, we also have to make decisions in the light of the security situation of our citizens as we see it.
So much for the obligation to consult between allies. and so much for the relevance of joint decision on the use of cruise missiles placed in Britain. To make these points is not to be anti-American, because members of the American Congress make them with as much force as I do.
The fact is that President Reagan has broken the postwar diplomatic tradition of all Governments in the United States since 1945, whether Republican or Democrat. He has abandoned reliance on co-operation and consensus with his allies in favour of what has come to be called a sort of global unilateralism. That tendancy of the United States to go it alone in every aspect of world affairs carries


with it immense dangers for world peace, since the American President at the moment sees the world exclusively in terms of red and white. He sees Russia as the foes of all evil in the world — [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Hon. Members may say "Hear, hear" but there were wars in the world before October 1917. There were conflicts in the middle east, Latin America and Europe. That inability to see the world except in the terms of the most primitive comic strip is immensely dangerous.
Of course, the experience that the Prime Minister has undergone in the past week or so was undergone not long ago by President Mitterrand over Chad. Some of the propositions attributed to the American President over the Grenada affair almost beggar the imagination. Apparently he asked the Prime Minister to make Grenada a Crown colony. So much for entering Grenada to restore democratic government. He told the world yesterday that he planned to ask the Governor-General to try to sort things out. I hope that the Prime Minister is aware that the Governor-General of Grenada is responsible to Her Majesty the Queen and not to the American President. I am glad to see that she concedes that point.
It really is time that the Prime Minister got off her knees and joined other allies of the United States, who are deeply concerned about the present trend in American policy. I shall put three specific and urgent suggestions to her. First, along, I hope, with her European partners, she must not offer support for a multinational force in the Lebanon unless the United States joins the European Governments in pressing President Gemayel to give the Muslim majority in the Lebanon a fair share of power, and concedes the right of Syria to have an interest in the problems — [Interruption.] Well, the Foreign Secretary apparently conceded that in his answer to a question I put on Monday. I just hope that he sticks to his guns when he meets Mr. Shultz tomorrow in Paris.
Secondly, the Prime Minister must fulfil the obligations that she accepted with other Community Governments to warn the United States of America against the use of force to solve central American problems. Nobody attacked American action in Grenada more strongly yesterday in the Security Council than the Government of Mexico. That Government certainly cannot be called Communist by any stretch of the imagination. It is about time that the Prime Minister started working with Governments who want conciliation in central America rather than with those who support confrontation.
One of. the most worrying things that the President has said in recent days is that we cannot pick and choose where we defend freedom. [AN HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear."] "Hear, hear," says someone. I do not know whether we can really expect the United States to defend freedom in El Salvador and Guatemala by the same means as the President has chosen to defend it in Grenada. However, I do think that there is a grave danger that he may choose the same methods in "defending freedom" in Nicaragua. It is vital that the influence of all America's allies is brought to bear at this moment to dissuade the American Administration from so dangerous and catastrophic a course.
Thirdly, if events continue as now foreseen, the British Government must, at the very minimum, refuse to accept the deployment of American missiles on British soil unless Britain has the physical power to prevent the use of those

missiles against her will. What has happened in Grenada must be a warning to the Secretary of State for Defence, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary in that regard. We on this side of the House—and I believe many on the other side of the House — believe that America's action against Grenada was a catastrophic blunder and that the failure of Her Majesty's Government to prevent it was an unforgivable dereliction of duty.
However, something at least may be gained from the experience of the past few days. This experience should warn America's allies of the danger of servility to a leadership from Washington which could be disastrous to the interests of the Western world. It should remind all of America's allies of the need to unite to shift American policy to the ways of co-operation and common sense.

The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Sir Geoffrey Howe): I welcome this opportunity—[Laughter.]—of debating the issues raised by the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) and of doing so in a spirit closer to a true recognition of British interests than he has shown. I begin by bringing the House up to date with the situation in Grenada.
The Americans have now secured both the airports on the island, at Pearls and Salines, as well as the radio station and Fort Rupert. But fighting is apparently continuing at Port Frederick and elsewhere. Several United States service men have been killed. There are unconfirmed reports that 12 Cubans have been killed during the fighting. There is no firm information at present about the extent of other casualties. In addition, there are reports that a number of Soviet nationals may have been detained, and rumours that Mr. Bernard Coard, one of the leaders of last week's coup d'etat, has sought sanctuary in the Soviet embassy. I am not in a position to confirm that. [Interruption.]
The latest information—the House would want to hear this, and it should listen to what I have to say—is that there are no reports of any British casualties. The United States Administration have informed us that they are willing to evacuate United Kingdom citizens to Barbados as soon as conditions allow. HMS Antrim remains ready to be called upon in case of need. We are also making contingency arrangements for evacuation by British aircraft. A consular mission from the British high commission in Bridgetown is standing by to go to Grenada as soon as practicable to establish how many British citizens may wish to be evacuated. The majority of them are long-term residents of Grenada.
I am glad to be able to inform the House that we have received assurances that the Governor-General, Sir Paul Scoon, is safe. [HON. MEMBERS: "Where?"] For his safety, it would not be sensible in the present circumstances for me to say more than I have. [Interruption.] The House must surely be prepared to acknowledge conditions of that kind and should be content to hear the news, of which I have been assured, that the Governor-General is safe. He may have an important role to play in the restoration of democracy in Grenada. He represents one of the few elements of constitutional continuity in Grenada. The American Administration are aware of that constitutional position and have, of course, undertaken to respect it.
The House might find it useful to be reminded of some of the events leading up to the present events. When Grenada achieved full independence on 7 February 1974, it was as a parliamentary democracy within the Commonwealth. The Prime Minister, Sir Eric Gairy, governed the country until March 1979 when he was overthrown as the result of a coup d'etat mounted by the New Jewel Movement. A People's Revolutionary government was set up led by a Marxist, Mr. Maurice Bishop. They suspended the constitution and governed by promulgating so-called "people's laws".
That was an unconstitutional regime. It lasted until 13 October, when Mr. Bishop was in his turn ousted by his deputy—I have already referred to him— Mr. Coard, a more radical Marxist. After several days confusion, a revolutionary military council was set up on 18 October, under the chairmanship of General Hudson Austin.
On the following day, 19 October, Mr. Bishop was killed, together with some of his closest supporters. There has been no satisfactory explanation of those killings, which have been rightly and widely condemned. After the killings, a 24-hour curfew was proclaimed which the revolutionary military council announced was to last until 24 October.
On 20 October, the day after Mr. Bishop's death, General Austin called on the Governor-General, Sir Paul Scoon. He told him that the revolutionary military council was in control, and that he intended to announce the composition of a new cabinet three days later. He later extended this to two weeks. On the same day, 20 October, the Grenadian high commissioner in London was called to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office so that we could underline our concerns about the safety of the British community.
On 21 October, the British high commissioner in Barbados learnt that some Caribbean Heads of Government were pressing their colleagues in the Caribbean community to ask for military help in restoring constitutional government in Grenada. We promptly instructed our embassy in Washington to ascertain how the United States Government might respond to such an approach.
On the following day, Saturday 22 October, the United States diverted towards Grenada a carrier group, led by USS Independence. They stated that that was a signal to the local authorities——

Mr. Healey: The right hon. and learned Gentleman will recall that I asked him to confirm the statement of Prime Minister Adams of Barbados that in the night of Friday a request was sent to Her Majesty's Government for support for military invasion of Grenada by a number of east European Caribbean—[Laughter]—east Caribbean Commonwealth — states. The behaviour has some similarities. Can the Foreign Secretary confirm the Prime Minister's statement?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am just about to deal with that. We were informed on the same day, 22 October, that Heads of Government of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States had decided to put together a multinational force and to call upon friendly Governments to help restore peace and order in Grenada.
Later that evening, we were informed by the American Government that they had received a firm request from the Heads of Government of that organisation to help restore peace and order in Grenada.
It should be pointed out, incidentally, that Barbados is not a member of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States. The United States Government told us that no decision had been taken on how to respond, and that they had concluded that they should proceed very cautiously. They had, of course, no reason to suppose that vie should support any such approach had it been made to us.
On Sunday 23 October, the British high commission in Barbados was informed that a formal request for British participation in a multinational force would probably be handed over later that day. This did not happen, but we received later that day the conclusions of a meeting held in Trinidad by all the Commonwealth Caribbean countries — except, of course, Grenada. They had decided in favour of political and economic measures against Grenada, but were divided about the desirability of military action.
We were in close touch with the American Government throughout 23 October and two American consular officials accompanied our deputy high commissioner from Bridgetown, Mr. Montgomery, on a visit to Grenada over the weekend. The purpose of that visit was to form a firsthand assessment of the risks to British and American citizens. Separately on that day, we were assured by the United States Government that we should be consulted immediately if the United States decided to take any action, and informed that a United States emissary, Ambassador McNeil, had been sent to Barbados to confer with Caribbean leaders.
It was also on that day, 23 October, that HMS Antrim was instructed to sail from Cartagena in Colombia to the vicinity of Grenada, in case the evacuation of British nationals proved necessary. I wish to emphasise that that was a precautionary move, entirely unrelated to the suggestion of some Caribbean leaders that a multinational force should be established.
Ministers met early on Monday morning, 24 October, to consider events over the weekend. We then had available to us the report on the visit to Grenada from the British deputy high commissioner to whom I have already referred. Following that meeting, our ambassador in Washington was instructed to put to the United States Government factors which would have to be carefully weighed before any decision was taken. It was that afternoon that I made a statement to the House. What I said to the House that afternoon represented my complete statement of the truth as I then understood it.

Mr. Healey: The noble Lady, the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said in the other place on the afternoon of 24 October:
We have not received any requests from the regional organisation in the Caribbean."— [Official Report, House of Lords, 24 October 1983; Vol. 444, c. 30.]
According to the Foreign Secretary, a request had been received on the Friday night preceding that statement. Either the statement was immensely disingenuous or it was plain wrong.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: The right hon. Gentleman has not been listening to what I have been saying. I have rehearsed the sequence of events and no such request had been received by the time I have just reached.

Mr. Healey: The right hon. and learned Gentleman said it was received.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: I have explained, and I shall explain again, that on Sunday 23 October, the British high


commission in Barbados was informed that a formal request for British participation would probably be handed over later that day, Sunday. That did not happen and, by the time that we came to Monday, the position was as I described it.
On Monday evening we received in London the text of the statement by the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, which had been handed to the British high commissioner in Barbados, informing the British Government, among others, of the organisation's intention of taking action under article 8 of the treaty of that organisation for the collective defence and preservation of peace and security against external aggression and requesting assistance from friendly Governments.
Also on Monday evening, President Reagan informed my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that he was giving serious consideration to the request from the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States and would welcome her thoughts. He undertook to inform my right hon. Friend in advance of any decision taken by the United States.
While our response to that message was being considered, a second message arrived from the President saying that he had decided to respond positively to the request that had been made to him. Ministers met immediately to discuss the situation and, shortly after midnight on Monday 25 October, my right hon. Friend sent a reply to the President in which, as she told the House yesterday, she reiterated the considerations which we had already put to the United States Government the previous day and expressed our concern at the course of action which he was contemplating.
My right hon. Friend also phoned the President—I am not prepared to disclose the substance of any discussion of that kind — in addition to sending the message, to underline the importance that she attached to the matter. Early on Tuesday morning my right hon. Friend received a message from President Reagan informing her that he had weighed the issues raised in her message very carefully, but had decided that United States participation in the multinational force should nevertheless go ahead.
That then is the sequence of events leading up to yesterday's military intervention. As I have explained to the House, Her Majesty's Government directed the attention of the United States to certain factors that should be taken into account. Some of these included the safety of our own community, the position of the Governor-General, and the fact that the CARICOM countries, the countries. of the Commonwealth Caribbean, although agreed on the need for political and economic measures, were divided on the advisability of military intervention. The United Kingdom and a number of other Commonwealth Caribbean countries took the view that no such action was called for. The situation was such that the United States and some Commonwealth countries in the Caribbean took the other view of the risk to which their citizens were exposed in Grenada.
The fact that, despite the reservations that we had expressed to them, the Americans decided to intervene in Grenada may be a matter of regret. We do not agree with the Americans on every issue, any more than they always agree with us—nor are we expected to do so. On some issues, our perceptions and those of the Americans are bound to be different. In this case, the United States had particular reason to consult most closely with those

Caribbean countries that had called on it to help resolve the crisis. Nevertheless, the extent of the consultation with us was regrettably less than we would have wished.
In the course of that consultation, my right hon. Friend made it plain to the United States Administration the views that we took, as one would expect her to do. For the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey), when there is a difference of view between the two countries plainly expressed—[HON. MEMBERS: "You did not express it."] —to take that occasion as one for denouncing my right hon. Friend as anybody's poodle is disgraceful. Moreover, the right hon. Gentleman sought to make light—

Mr. Jack Straw: In view of what the Foreign Secretary has now said, which is very different from what he said yesterday, does he now condemn what the Americans have done?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: Not so, Sir. What I have just clearly said to the House is that this was an occasion when the United States, in company with a number of Commonwealth Caribbean countries, has taken one view and the United Kingdom, together with a number of other Caribbean Commonwealth countries, has taken another view.

Dr. David Owen: rose—

Sir Geoffrey Howe: In those circumstances, it is no more for me to condemn the United States than it is for them to condemn us.

Dr. Owen: rose—

Mr. Healey: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I did not see the Foreign Secretary give way.

Dr. Owen: rose—

Mr. Healey: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. It is plain that the Foreign Secretary is not giving way.

Mr. Healey: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Healey.

Mr. Healey: The United States has committed a breach of the United Nations charter in international law. The matter is now under discussion in the Security Council in the United Nations. Unless Her Majesty's Government wish to continue playing the role that I attributed to them, they must express a view on the violation of the charter. It is the obligation of the Foreign Secretary, representing Her Majesty's Government, to make his views plain and not to run away from the problem.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: The right hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the fact that the Security Council met last night at the request of Nicaragua, and will be meeting again today as a draft resolution has been tabled by Guyana, which would have the Security Council issue a strong condemnation of the action taken by the United States and the Caribbean countries acting with it, and which calls for the withdrawal of all troops involved. The right hon. Gentleman expressed his opinion that this country should support this resolution and in advancing that argument he sought to draw parallels with other circumstances that are irrelevant to this case.

Dr. Owen: rose—

Sir Geoffrey Howe: In a moment.
The right hon. Member for Leeds, East sought to draw attention to the views of the United States President on the dangers posed by the Soviet Union to the world, and dismissed them lightly. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I must draw his attention to this fact as the House considers his commendation of that resolution. The fact is that in Afghanistan troops have occupied the country. In Grenada, the intention of the United States and those who are acting with her is to move as quickly as possible towards the withdrawal of their troops and towards the holding of free elections. Would that the House could count on the prospect of free elections in Afghanistan—[Interruption.]

Dr. Owen: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) was heard in silence and the Foreign Secretary should also be given a fair hearing.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: What has happened in this case does not, and must not be allowed to, weaken the essential fabric of our alliance with the United States. It does not, and must not be allowed to, cast any doubt on the firmness of our joint commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and all that that means.

Dr. Owen: Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

Sir Geoffrey Howe: The right hon. Member for Leeds, East suggested that this week's events are relevant to decisions that might have to be taken about the use of nuclear weapons. There is no credible analogy between our exchanges with the Americans on Monday night and the consultations that would take place before any decision could be taken to fire American nuclear missiles from Britain. [HON. MEMBERS: "How do you know?"]
As we have made clear to the House, there are quite specific understandings between the British and United States' Governments on the use by the Americans of their nuclear weapons and bases in Britain. Those understandings have been jointly reviewed in the light of the planned deployment here of cruise missiles and we are satisfied that they are effective. As I say, these understandings are specific, as are the arrangements for implementing them. They mean that no nuclear weapon would be fired or launched from British territory without the British Prime Minister's agreement.

Dr. Owen: I understand the Foreign Secretary's reluctance to damage Anglo-United States relations, and fully understand, too, his reluctance to use words such as "condemn" of our principal friend and ally, but I disagree with his judgment that this event does not mean that we should have dual key on cruise missiles. Nevertheless, the Foreign Secretary has a duty to the House to make it clear, as he will have to do in the Security Council, whether he believes that the United States and the other Caribbean states were justified—I use the term "justified"—under article 8 of the charter in invading Grenada. Surely the answer is that they were not justified, and the Foreign Secretary should say so from the Dispatch Box.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: On a matter of this kind it is still possible for more than one view to be held—[HON. MEMBERS: "Resign!"]—and it is not simply because I understand the reasons that prompt the right hon. Gentleman to respect the need for discretion. Of course we have to take care of what we say about one of our principal allies, but at this time. when the operations in that island

to restore democracy to the people of Grenada are still under way, nothing could be less helpful than for me to respond to his invitation to condemn the conduct of the United States.

Sir John Biggs-Davison: rose—

Sir Geoffrey Howe: If I may return to the Caribbean—

Hon. Members: Yes—now.

Mr. Speaker: Order. These are very important matters.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: It should not be overlooked that seven independent Caribbean countries have joined the United States in this intervention. Indeed, as the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, they urged it on the United States. It is not perhaps sufficiently recognised that, although these islands enjoy full independence, the islands of the Caribbean have a high degree of mutual dependence. There have been democratic elections in most of those islands very recently. They attach great importance to the consolidation of democratic processes throughout the region.
That is why the original coup of 1979 in Grenada was so disturbing, and why the bloody events of last week so deeply affronted them. The breakdown of constitutional government, the rule of law and public safety in one of their members was perceived as a dangerous disruption by a country in the immediate vicinity.
Not only was that the case, but we must remember that, just as the United States had some 1,000 citizens in Grenada, so the other Caribbean countries which have intervened have nationals of their own on Grenada and have Grenadians in their own islands. It is a very close family of states.
Just as that fact explains much of what has happened, so also it perhaps provides the key to the way ahead. Countries which have participated in the present operation will be well placed to assist the Grenadians to restore and set up the necessary machinery to ensure an early return to constitutionality and democracy.
Ever since the overthrow of Sir Eric Gairy 's Government, Grenada has been without constitutional government. Mr. Bishop declined to hold elections and was himself the victim of violent overthrow.
The countries that have intervened are democratic countries. Their stated objective is to restore democratic and constitutional government to the island. That is an objective which we fully share. It may be necessary and desirable for other Commonwealth states to play a part in that process. We shall be in touch with our Commonwealth partners about that, and we welcome the willingness of the Commonwealth Secretary-General to help towards that end. The Americans, as the House clearly understands., have made plain their wish to withdraw from the Grenadian scene at the earliest reasonable opportunity. Meantime, their forces and those of Commonwealth countries involved are exposed to great danger [HON. MEMBERS: "They should not be there."] We shall do nothing to make their task more difficult. We must all wish for a speedy and successful outcome, one that will quickly pave the way for genuine elections in Grenada, for the first time in many years.
The whole House will hope that Grenada will again be able to move forward along the path of democracy and so improve the prospects for peace throughout the Caribbean. [HON. MEMBERS: "Resign, resign!"]

Mr. David Steel: The Foreign Secretary has told the House that it is possible for more than one view to be held on this issue. Of course that is true, but it is not possible for more than one view to be held by the Foreign Secretary, and he has failed to tell the House what instructions have been given to the British ambassador at the United Nations and what view will be taken in the Security Council. I hope that matter will be cleared up before the debate ends.
It is obvious that the reasons given by the American Administration for this exercise are not validated by any international law or by the charter of the United Nations. Of course, it is pressing the point too far to make comparisons with the Russian invasion of Afghanistan or of Czechoslovakia. Nevertheless, we should be quite clear that the United States Administration have thrown away the moral stance that we have always maintained of respecting other countries' national integrity and the right to resist outside interference. Therefore, I believe that the British Government were right to protest to the United States, but that they took it too late. I believe that the history of our relations with Grenada, over which the Foreign Secretary skated rather lightly, shows that we have been dragged along with a mistaken United States foreign policy over several years.
This morning Secretary of State Shultz was reported as saying that one of the objectives of the exercise was the hope of establishing a friendly Government in Grenada. We all hope for friendly neighbours and friendly Governments, but there is no rule of international law which allows the big powers to go round establishing friendly Governments in the small countries of the world. That is a very dangerous proposition to allow to pass without comment.
There is the danger that in making such criticism of an ally we will be thought to be anti-American. I hope that we can dispose of that now, because some of the most trenchant criticism has come from within the United States. For example, Senator Moynihan—with whose views on other matters I do not always agree—very pointedly said that the United States Government are imposing democracy at bayonet point. That is, I think, a graphic description.
I understand that in his television address President Reagan demonstrated a satellite photograph of the airport development in Grenada, as though it were some kind of defence secret that was being revealed to the American public. The truth is surely very different. The airport has been known to be being developed over some time. There are hundreds of American students at present in Grenada, some of whom, I am told, go jogging round the airport which is under construction. I am further told—I should be grateful if the Foreign Secretary would listen to me, because I want confirmation of this matter—that British employees of a radar company are working with the Cubans in the construction of facilities at the airport. May we have confirmation that that is true? Has the Foreign Secretary assured the President of the United States that

they are not part of some international Communist conspiracy? We must maintain a sense of proportion about the construction of the airport, which has been the subject of discussion with the British Government and with the United States Government over several years.
In 1974, criticism was expressed on both sides of the House that we had not adequately ensured fair elections prior to Grenada's independence. Many doubts were expressed, and they were later justified by the fact that the Gairy regime in Grenada, towards the end of its life, became extremely corrupt and violent. A secret police force operated on the island and normal law and order of the kind that we should have been supporting was suppressed. Yet the Gairy regime was propped up and supported by the British Government and by the United States Government.
Those who opposed the Gairy regime—including the Opposition and Mr. Bishop—were gradually outflanked by those who wanted to revert to undemocratic methods. That is what led to the coup and the installation of Mr. Bishop. Neither the British nor the American Government protested about the Gairy regime's conduct prior to its overthrow.
The first lesson that Britain and the United States must learn is that, if we value liberal democracy, which is a diminishing commodity in the world today, we must strongly resist totalitarian tendencies of both the Left and the Right. We must learn that we do not assist the process of encouraging liberal democracy by supporting every thug in Latin America who happens to be anti-Communist. That has been the present American Administration's position. On the contrary, far from supporting liberal democracy, that helps to hand the argument to the Marxists who are then unable to distinguish between liberal democracy and Fascist dictatorships or military regimes.
After the invasion of the Falklands, I recall how we suddenly found our detestation of the military junta in Argentina. Before that we were happily selling it arms. We must draw a firmer line in defence of liberal democracy and against the totalitarianism of both Left and Right. That is the first lesson.
What happened after Mr. Bishop came to power in the coup? The United States Administration reacted by cutting off their aid programme to Grenada and the British Government followed suit. The British ended aid. That was in contrast with the Canadian Government who, in view of that, decided to increase aid to Grenada in its most useful form—people. The EC did the same. Under the African Caribbean and Pacific agreement it maintained its aid programme.
In 1979 as a Government and country we opposed the views of our Commonwealth colleagues and EC partners and were caught in the coat tails of the American Administration. That, surely, is the second lesson that we should learn. The Canadian Government turned out to be right by attempting to prevent the game in Grenada going to Moscow. We ignored that.
The Select Committee in its report of 1981–82 was right to say that we should resume the aid programme. The Government rejected that view in their White Paper. I believe that as things have turned out the Select Committee was right.
In June this year Mr. Bishop went to the United States. For what purpose? One purpose was to try to secure some aid for the airport, the construction of which has now been


condemned. Canadian advisers had said that Grenada's economy should be developed with more tourist facilities. Since most of the tourists would have come from America, Mr. Bishop went to America to try to secure aid for the construction of the new airport. He was snubbed by the United States Government. He was seen not at ministerial level, let alone by the President, but by officials. His reputation at home was damaged by his experience, and he went off to Cuba and east Europe to get the funds and support that he was denied by the United States.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: That is not relevant.

Mr. Steel: The fourth lesson that we must learn is that the statement by Mr. Shultz yesterday, that the United States does not always have to agree with Britain, has a corollary which the Foreign Secretary enunciated a moment ago. It is that Britain does not always have to agree with the United States.
When the Foreign Secretary referred to the cruisemissile agreement he used precisely the same words as the Prime Minister in her answer to the House in May when she talked about the understandings and the arrangements for implementing the agreement. She said:
The effect of the understandings and the arrangements … is that no nuclear weapon would be fired or launched from British territory without the agreement of the British Prime Minister." —[Official Report, 12 May 1983; Vol. 42, c. 435.]
No American Administration can guarantee that that will always be so. We have seen, surely, in these events that the House will be asked shortly to take a decision either to deploy cruise in this country without any effective guarantee that there will be control, because there is no dual key mechanism, or to decide not to. Let us not rely on undertakings which date back to the Attlee-Truman era relating to bombers, not missiles.
We must learn another lesson. It has become far too fashionable in Britain and in the United States to denigrate the United Nations as a useless organisation. The smaller states in the world, such as Grenada, are vulnerable to internal overthrow, to neighbouring regimes, to other states and even to the influences of big business. The smaller countries are entitled to greater protection from some form of international policemen. Instead of undermining the United Nations' authority, the British and United States Administrations should develop an active and positive role for that international organisation.

Mr. George Walden: I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for calling me to speak for the first time in the House. I hope that the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Steel) will excuse me if I do not take up his argument.
I apologise to my constituents, since I shall speak only briefly about their affairs in my intervention in a foreign affairs debate. I am fortunate to be the Member for Buckingham, a new constituency. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes (Mr. Benyon) and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison), my predecessors, who set me high standards. The constituency has many traditions of excellence, in farming, in the human scale of its industry—Wipac and Airtec — in the British Rail engineering depot at Wolverton and in the independent university at Buckingham. We have our problems about health and rates, and I shall reflect my constituents' concern here.
The people of north and mid-Bucks are realistic, reflective and independent-minded. They know that whatever our difficulties things are tougher a few miles to the north. They also know instinctively what I am learning in the House — that we have a duty to look at the broader picture as well as the local and partisan aspects. That goes for the Health Service, and I believe that it goes for Grenada.
Most right hon. and hon. Members must be saddened by the disagreements that we have had with the United States, but I believe that most of us think that our historic relationship with that country is broad and deep enough to bear the weight of these disagreements.
Most of us will remember that only a year ago the whole of NATO, not to mention the Anglo-American relationship, was about to collapse under the weight of a length of piping. I do not want to underestimate the Grenada problem. Small places throw up big principles. However, I doubt whether Grenada can do to Anglo-American relations what Suez failed to do, grave though the position is.
I do not support intervention — I oppose it quite simply on principle. As a newcomer, I have listened carefully to the powerful speeches that have been made on both sides of the House with more force than I my self can muster, but I hope that the country as a whole will recognise our Government's courage in making their views clear on what has happened and in trying to convey those views to the United States to head off the situation that has now arisen. Surely it is more usual to be blamed for giving the wrong advice and to be listened to than to give the right advice and not be heeded. I also think that there is nothing reprehensible in trying to minimise the repercussions of these disagreements, in the light of our longer-term relationship with our major ally.
The Government have also been charged with impotence. It is never humiliating to be right, but the charge of impotence touches on the wider problem of Britain's influence in the world today. Britain still has enormous influence. In my experience, it is our biggest invisible export. That influence has been exercised for the good over many years. Things are bad enough in the world, but it is my impression that they would be that much worse without the activity of successive British Governments over the years to moderate the passions that govern the world.
The main reason why I am in the House today and not lying abroad for my country is that inexorably and inevitably our influence in the world will decline unless we put this country in order. Over the years I have become more and more aware of the relentless constraints on defence, on the difficulty of keeping up our high levels of generosity in overseas aid, and of the difficulty of exercising our influence through Europe, which is now a major channel for that influence, because that channel is too often clogged by financial squabbles of one sort or another.
It is impossible to call on this country to exercise more influence and to be more active in international relations if we do not tackle our domestic problems. If we aspire, as some would wish, to a quiet life in the economy, in our education or in our culture, how, in the longer-term, can we ensure our defence? How can we ensure the respect which I believe is due to us? How can we exercise our traditional influence, which is needed more than ever


today? It is because I believe that the Government recognise those truths that I am a Conservative Member of Parliament.
This debate reminds us that we need maximum British influence in the world today. Our view may not always prevail, particularly, of course, when other countries, such as the United States, see their security interests differently, but—and this is perhaps my most important point—as the tempo of East-West events quicken, so will the need for Britain's voice of restraint to be heard as loudly and as frequently as possible. I believe that our Government's courageous position on Grenada has heightened and not diminished our influence in the world. We shall continue, I hope, to look to the United States, and I hope that it will continue to look to us for mutual support and advice. We continue to be the bedrock of each other's security. Yet Grenada reminds us that in the longer term we must also look to ourselves and to Europe.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: The House has just listened with attention to the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Walden), who has taken the courageous decision to address it for the first time in one of the most tense of debates. The House will agree with me that he acquitted himself well.
The hon. Gentleman comes into the House with a great advantage and a great disadvantage. He comes with the great advantage of worldwide experience over a number of years and the ability to see the affairs of this country as they are seen from outside. He comes with the disadvantage of being in a sense typed by his professional association with a Department of State. Perhaps I might say to him that the House of Commons rewards those who serve it and it alone. It regards no qualifications and no status which purports to be brought from outside. It takes its Members as they are; and the hon. Member for Buckingham, who I hope will be a Member of this House for many years, will do best as he serves this House for itself and for its purposes.
I thought that yesterday the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister were under the impression that I had called in question the good faith of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I want to make it clear that in no sense did I seek to do so. On the contrary, I believe that today he made good the claim that on no substantial point did he mislead this House as to the facts as he knew and saw them at the successive times when he addressed the House. The difficulty of the right hon. and learned Gentleman and the charge against him are different and, in a sense, more serious. It is not in good faith that he has been lacking; it has been in faith—rather perhaps credulity—that he has been excessive.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman had a task that would have been unenviable for the greatest of parliamentarians—that of coming to the House on a Monday and saying that he had been in "the closest possible touch" with the American Government and believed that there was no reason for thinking they would resort to military action, and then returning next day to inform the House that the Americans had taken that action. I was not sure, listening to what he said this afternoon, that either he or the Government have learnt the lesson that

should be drawn from that experience. It is the knowledge of what interpretation the United States places upon consultation and common decision with its allies.
Consultation and common decision mean for the United States that it will from time to time take such steps and such decisions as, in its judgment, it considers to be right in the interests of the United States, that it will permit representations to be made to it by its allies, but that in the end it will go its own way regardless.
This has not been the first case from which we can learn that lesson. I disagree with the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) in thinking that this is at all a recent experience. It has been the pattern of behaviour of the United States over the past 20 or 30 years. During the Yom Kippur war in 1973, when the European members of the NATO Alliance said that they saw no reason for it, the United States put its forces on full nuclear alert. It did not listen to the views, and it did not concert its action with the views, of its European allies. Again, hon. Members who were in the last Parliament will remember the humiliating experience of being driven to place upon the statute book a sanctions Act against Iran. Yet hardly had the House recovered from the fatigue of sitting up all night to do so than it heard that, without consultation or information to those who were endeavouring to support it, the United States had engaged in a wild and unlawful attack on the territory of Iran itself.
This pattern of behaviour of the United States is perfectly consistent throughout; it is a pattern that can be accounted for by the policy and outlook of that country.
At the invitation of Her Majesty's Government, the United States is about to station on the soil of the United Kingdom nuclear weapons which, we are told, will be used only after consultation and by joint decision with Her Majesty's Government. Anyone who, after the experience of the last few days and of recent years, imagines that the United States will defer to the views of the Government of this country if it considers it necessary to use those weapons is living in a dangerous fool's paradise. Anyone in office who entertains that illusion is in no position to serve the security of this country.
The United States is dominated by two mutually supporting delusions. The first is that it is within the power of any nation, let alone the United States, to create what it calls freedom and democracy by external military force — that it is within its power to decide how the inhabitants of other countries should, in its interests, be governed, and to bring that about in the last resort by military interposition.
It also believes that the world is involved in a Manichaean struggle between the powers of light and the powers of darkness and that the mantle of leading the powers of light has fallen on the United States. I do not think that the consequences of that delusion, a nationwide delusion held and expressed by Americans of every class and creed, can be better expressed than it was —significantly over 20 years ago — by the Washington correspondent of The Times during the Cuba crisis. He wrote:
The President … in effect has assumed the supreme political authority that was always inherent in the American nuclear deterrent. The firm belief is that as the leaders of the Alliance, with control of most of the nuclear power available to the West, the Administration has a right and a duty to defend itself and its allies—even to the extent of bringing about a nuclear exchange. It is also firmly believed"—


and these last words are the most significant for what will happen unless the Government have wiser thoughts in the coming weeks—
in the present situation that there will be no time for consultation; that a threat of war cannot be met by committee decisions.
What we should have learnt, or been reminded of, in the last few clays is that the only condition compatible with our national honour and independence for those weapons being stationed on our soil, if indeed they are to be so stationed, is that this country should hold the physical control and ultimate power of decision over their use.
I commend to the Government and the House—and, greatly presuming, if I may, to our American allies—a remarkable and profound statement by, of all people, George Washington. He is reported as having said:
The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.
It is an habitual hatred which has diverted the United States from a true perception and appreciation of the real state of the world in which it has to live. It is an habitual fondness which has turned this country into something horribly resembling a satellite of the United States.
I hope that after what we have experienced in recent days we can set aside those prejudices which would divert us from our interest and duty, and that Her Majesty's Government, free of habitual hatred or habitual fondness, will preserve and pursue their sole duty to the interests of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Julian Amery: The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) opened up broad horizons. There will be time to discuss those on many occasions. I shall confine myself to the immediate problem of Grenada.
No one who knows him would accuse my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary of trying to mislead the House, yet I find it difficult to understand how he could have made so bland and reassuring a statement as he did last Monday. Warships of the United States and our own were close to Grenada. Their purpose was to protect our respective citizens if they were in danger and I imagine that there was some contingency planning between the two. If there was not, there should have been.
Over the weekend there was much talk in the Caribbean islands of military intervention. There appear to have been exchanges between London and Washington—I do not know at what level — about the pros and cons of intervention. It seems strange in those circumstances that my right hon. and learned Friend could have given such a reassuring picture. I should have thought that the crisis was so close that it would have been better for him to have considered sending at least a Minister of State, if not himself, to the Caribbean or Washington to discuss the situation, whatever might have been the policy of the Government. I cannot help feeling that the handling of the situation has not been quite as effective as it might have been. Of course the weekend intervened, but such things have influenced us adversely before.
I come to the main issue at stake, the merits of the case. It will be agreed that there are broadly two schools of thought in Britain. There are those who think that the world is still at peace in spite of local crises East and West. There are those who believe that, in this situation, the

causes of those crises must be looked at primarily in their local environments—that each case must be judged on its merits—and that the proper course is to address them within the normal terms of old-fashioned diplomacy as enshrined in the charter of the United Nations and international law, and that we should not allow the struggle between the two superpowers—between Soviet imperialism and the free world — to influence our judgment too much. That is one school of thought which is held largely on the Opposition Benches and may be held by some of my hon. Friends.
There is another school of thought which believes that we are facing a global struggle—not a total war like the first or second world wars, but something more akin to the 100 years war or the 30 years war—a struggle for the control of the world between the two great centres of power in which the imperialism of the Soviet Union is seen, at any rate by those who hold this view, as the aggressor. If one looks at it that way, each local crisis must be considered as, among other things, a battlefield in a not-so-cold war.
I do not want to widen the discussion to the extent that the right hon. Member for Down, South did by illustrating my point too much, but those of us who feel that way say that what happened in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Aden bears out our point and that in our view the free world must try to see where it can prevent the onward march of Soviet imperialism and, if possible, reverse it.
There is a Soviet doctrine that any gain that the Soviets make must be irreversible. I do not understand why the West should share that view. I understand that that is President Reagan's view. I understand also that it is the view that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister took long before she became Prime Minister. It appears from her latest speeches that she still holds it. For what it is worth, it happens also to be my humble view.
Let us focus this view on Grenada. As the House knows, Grenada is a small island. When I was an Under-Secretary of State at the long-forgotten Colonial Office., I was responsible for Grenada. Its domestic problems are fairly small and not too difficult to regulate. But it was in the process of becoming a Soviet base and an extension of Cuba, which is already a major base in the Caribbean, and Nicaragua, which is still in the process of developing into one. There were many Cubans working in Grenada. There were some scores of Soviet technicians, and perhaps, officers, working there as well.
Those developments were seen as a threat to the other Caribbean islands long before the latest coup. These are islands for which we were responsible until recently and which, like many other right hon. and hon. Members, I know fairly well. The developments were seen also as a threat to the United States. The developments in Cuba and Grenada, and in Nicaragua, too, can equally be regarded as a threat to Europe. All supplies from the west coast of America, in peace as much as in war, have to pass through the Caribbean to reach us. We, too, are thus closely involved. It should have been—I imagine it would have been—the aim of the free world, from the time that Mr. Bishop seized power by illicit means, to try to win Grenada back into the free world.
There may also have been an element of urgency about this, because a major airfield was being built. There was a substantial Cuban presence on the island as well as a not


unimportant Soviet presence. Had matters not come to a head when they did, the issue might have become much more difficult.

Mr. David Winnick: Is the right hon. Gentleman saying by his use of the words "free world" that as long as a regime is anti-Communist it does not matter what sort of dictatorship or tyranny may exist, be it in Latin America or South Africa, about which he has often spoken? Is he saying that that is acceptable? Does the right hon. Gentleman not recognise that repulsive reactionary regimes of the sort that existed in Grenada prior to Mr. Bishop taking over — regimes that are reactionary in every possible way—will lead sooner or later to military changes? Does he not understand that there will be changes by non-democratic means because democracy has ceased to exist in the areas over which the regimes prevail? The regimes which the right hon. Gentleman is willing to defend and justify because they are anti-Communist can be said in many ways to pave the way for some form of Communist regime.

Mr. Amery: I shall not take up all the points that the hon. Gentleman made in his eloquent speech. In Grenada there was a pro-Soviet Government and they were helped by Cubans and Soviets. Grenada could have become a threat, in the context of Cuba and Nicaragua, to the other Caribbean Commonwealth countries, to the United States and to Europe.

Mr. Allan Roberts: rose—

Mr. Amery: No, I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman. I have already given way once on this point and I shall not give way again.

Mr. Roberts: I wished to intervene on a different matter.

Mr. Amery: When there came a second military and bloodthirsty coup, the danger to the Caribbean was underlined, as was the danger to the United States. I think that my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary will agree that the majority of the Caribbeans —I have not added up all the islands—wanted some military intervention to take place. If the report in The Guardian is right, and if I understood my right hon. and learned Friend aright, the Caribbeans wanted us to help them in the process of intervention. They wanted us to give a lead and the United States was prepared, in the circumstances, to take part.
Here was an opportunity for Britain, as a leading Commonwealth power — I shall not say the leading power, because the Commonwealth is a community of equals, but Britain is a leading and founding member of the organisation—to give a lead. Here was our chance to send a Minister to co-ordinate the entire venture. Instead, we abdicated any form of leadership. We should have taken, as the Opposition would have wished, a stand against intervention. We could, as I would have wished, have said, "Let us join wholeheartedly in the intervention." However, we did neither. As a result of our relapse into pallid abstention, the Caribbeans turned to the United States for leadership and went ahead. We showed neither the courage to lead nor to oppose.
This performance cannot do much for the dignity of our country or to enhance our prestige abroad. I do not want

to exaggerate the importance of prestige, but we gained a good deal of it in the Falklands operation. On this occasion our performance has not been an effective way of maintaining the position that we then gained.
It is idle to say, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary said yesterday, that the only difference between us and the United States was over whether it was necessary to take action to rescue our nationals. There were much wider considerations of state. I cannot help thinking that my right hon. and learned Friend was adversely or wrongly briefed by the Foreign Office on an exaggerated estimate of what the Third world or the rest of the Commonwealth would think. It is possible that some economic considerations were taken into account or the possibility that Defence Estimates might be raised as a result.
Luckily, the operation seems to have been pretty successful; and now the problem is to repair the damage that has been done to our relations with our closest allies. In my judgment, the damage should never have occurred. Here was an issue on which there was no reason to differ from the Americans. Hon. Members who are old enough will have heard me thunder against the Americans over Suez and other operations where I thought that British and American interests were in conflict. In this instance I see no conflict. There is only a marginal difference of view and I fear that the Americans were right and we were wrong.
Mere gestures will not repair the damage. There will be a need for closer co-operation in the struggle against Soviet imperialism. I believe that this is a cause to which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and, I hope, my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary are as deeply committed as the President of the United States.

Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: The performance that the Government have given us today can hardly be described as the pursuit of arrogant power. It has been a pathetic and demeaning example of what they are incapable of saying to the United States. The United States has demonstrated that it believes that the Caribbean is its own basin. It believes that it can do what it wishes in the Caribbean, and the Government told the House on Monday that they felt that there was no danger of an invasion of Grenada. The following day Grenada was invaded. The British Government still do not know what to do about it or to say to the United States in reply. I hope that we shall recognise throughout the debate the nature of American policy in the entire region and recognise the scandalous role of British foreign policy in the region.
The Americans have sought consistently to undermine and destabilise the Governments of Grenada since 1979. They have sought consistently to undermine and destabilise the Government of Jamaica. They did so until Mr. Seaga was elected Prime Minister. They have consistently sought to undermine and destabilise any Government in the region who have sought to develop the interests of the people rather than the interests of the multinational companies that are busy exploiting those people.
At the centre of the debate and of the activities of the United States lies its belief that its role is to defend the people who pay the Government — the multinational companies. The British Government are doing exactly the same. In every conference chamber around the world, the


British Government support American foreign policy. They do not have a foreign policy in the Caribbean or central America. All they know is to follow the United States—except that when the issue of Grenada came up they did not know what to do. So, for three days running, we have had a pathetic appearance by the Foreign Secretary, who has been wondering what to do next. He comes to the House, wringing his hands, wondering what on earth to say next. He knows that he has been made to look an absolute idiot because he was incapable of standing up to the Americans for once. The one thing that the Americans do not respect is the Uriah Heep diplomacy that the British Government operate towards them. The Pavlovian response of agreeing to everything that the United States demands and wants has got them nowhere and has made them look incredibly stupid and shortsighted.
We should consider some of the events in Grenada over the past five years, because a most amazing travesty of history was given to us this afternoon. It is a tribute to the people of Grenada, the New Jewel Movement Government, Maurice Bishop and others who held office in that Government, that a nation of 300 million people should seek to invade a country of 110,000. It is some threat to a nation of 300 million that warrants a military intervention. The real threat to the United States is not a military threat from the people of Grenada any more than there was a military threat from the people of Nicaragua or from the people of Guatemala in 1954. It is a threat of ideas and example. The New Jewel Movement Government in Grenada achieved a sense of liberation for its people, health care, a reduction in the illiteracy rate that makes it among the lowest in the Caribbean, and a reduction in unemployment from well over 50 per cent. in 1979 to 15 per cent. in 1983. The Tory Government came to power in 1979 and during the same period threw 2 million people on to the dole queue. That is a comparison between what the popular Government were trying to achieve in Grenada and what the Government have been trying to achieve here.
I hope that the House will recognise that the intervention in Grenada must be totally condemned. If we are talking about a genuine liberation of the people and genuine self-determination, that means the removal of foreign troops from Grenada. The American troops are doing nothing there but impose upon the people of Grenada a Government who will be subservient to the United States, provide a base for yet more American aircraft carriers in the Caribbean and make the Caribbean safe for American multinationals that continue exploiting people. Exploitation has been going on for centuries, and it has been taken over by American multinationals.
The House should consider the attitude that was taken towards the Government of Maurice Bishop and his colleagues after Eric Gairy left office. In case the House did not realise it, the Government that was led by Mr. Eric Gairy in Grenada—

Mr. Richard Hickmet: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Corbyn: I am not giving way. The hon. Gentleman will have a chance to speak.
The Government led by Mr. Eric Gairy were by any standards a corrupt and inefficient Government. They were a poodle of Western and American policies. That

Government were never condemned by Conservative Members and even now they are not condemned by Conservative Members. Somehow, the theory was built up that it was some form of friendly democratic administration. It was nothing of the kind. It was the opposite.
The achievements of the Government of the New Jewel Movement over the past few years are an inspiration to many people in the Caribbean. Because they are an inspiration, the Americans spent an amazing amount of money trying to promote an economic blockade of that country—the British Government joined in — to prevent foreign aid going to Grenada—the British Government joined in — and to promote CIA methods of destabilisation, as we have seen in so many other countries in the Caribbean, in central America and throughout Latin America. It is wrong for the Americans to take the arrogant view that they can decide everything that goes on within their hemisphere. I reject that, as do many other hon. Members.
While we are considering the situation in the Caribbean, we should also consider what is happening not far away in central America. The present Sandinista Government of National Reconstruction in Nicaragua came to power in 1979. They have achieved much in health care, in education, in housing and in putting an end to illiteracy. What support and help have they received from the British or American Government? They have received an economic and military blockade. American-financed CIA forces have invaded the country, murdering people and destroying the economic base, all in the name of the national security of the United States.
By no stretch of the imagination could one say that either Grenada or Nicaragua could raise an army, air force or navy that could cross the sea or land and invade the United States. The Americans know perfectly well that there is no military threat. They know perfectly well that there is no military threat from anywhere in the Caribbean or central America other than the threat of ideas and inspiration. Two countries have recently sought their liberation—Grenada, which has been so brutally crushed by the American forces, and Nicaragua, which sought its liberation by asking American-owned multinationals to leave and foreign countries to leave it alone so that it could develop its own way of life, democracy, economy and a decent standard of living for its people. That model is too much for American power to contend with, so the Americans have to oppose and destabilise it.
The British and American Governments are obsessed with the Soviet-Cuban threat of domination of the whole region. I ask the House to consider what the Government of Grenada, Nicaragua or any other country should do when the country's trade is blocked off, its aid is removed., and an economic and military blockade is raised against it. What is it to do to get help? Where is it to get support and assistance? If anyone imagines that the Government of either Grenada or Nicaragua were somehow imposing themselves on the people and were forced on them at the point of a Russian gun or a Cuban bayonet, he should read his history of Grenada and what happened there in 1979 when Eric Gairy was forced out of office by a popular revolution. The people could no longer stand the corruption, the secret police and the prison system that he imposed on them. That point must be put across in the House.
The Americans' claim that they went into Grenada to protect the lives of Americans and foreigners in the area is farcical. The area in which there was fighting, in which people have been killed and in which murders have taken place is a tourist area, where all the foreign people were, and may still be for all we know. The United States' intention has been to remove the popular Government. I believe that there is a long story yet to be told about what the CIA has been doing in Grenada for the past four years and what it has been up to in undermining the Government before the dispute took place and before the military tried to take over last week.
The British Government announced this afternoon that they were concerned about the breakdown of democracy and about what they thought were not democratic Governments in the Caribbean or central America. Do they apply the same standards to the racist South African regime? Do they apply the same standards to any other oppressive Government? No, they do not. They are obsessed with supporting the United States in the Caribbean and in central America. They have emerged with egg on their face, as they were incapable of putting forward any view whatever to the United States.
We require from the Government a foreign policy that recognises that the people of the Caribbean and central America have had sufficient lectures and blandishments from western Europe and the United States and more than enough of American-owned multinational companies coming into their countries and running the economies for the benefit of people in London, Wall street or any other financial capital. I believe that people in the Caribbean want a sense of liberation which cannot be achieved if, at the same time, forces are being sent into their countries to promote the interests of those in the financial capitals.
I hope that the House will not only condemn the invasion of Grenada by the United States and demand their immediate withdrawal, but that the British Government will also be condemned for standing by and allowing a foreign power to invade Grenada.
The Foreign Secretary and Conservative Members have said that several Soviet or Cuban citizens were on Grenada at the time of the American invasion. I understand that thousands of American troops are stationed in bases in this country. Can it not be said that they are a threat to our democracy? Are they not a threat to us? What are they doing here? I ask hon. Members to have a sense of priority and proportion in this matter. I also ask hon. Members to condemn the American invasion and the inaction of the British Government. We must also at the Security Council condemn the actions of the Americans and demand their immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Grenada so that the Grenadians can sort out their own future in their own way without the assistance of American marines.

Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Walden) on his excellent maiden speech in terms as sincere but less convoluted than were directed at him by the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell).
We face a grave situation in Grenada. It is right that the House of Commons should come together to express its mind and, hopefully, the mind of the nation on the issues involved. Whatever the reasons that inspired the United

States to invade Grenada, I believe that the United States acted precipitately, unwisely, and illegally in invading an independent state. The position has been made worse for us as that state is also a member of the Commonwealth. The United States did not act with due consideration for the interest of its allies, particularly its closest ally, the United Kingdom. We are, therefore, right to feel aggrieved at what has happened. We have been treated cavalierly, arrogantly and contemptuously, and we should recognise that fact. The House of Commons should make that view clear.
Having said that and having condemned the United States for its action, that is no reason for turning on the Foreign Secretary as though he were somehow responsible for the actions of the United States. I believe that, within the limits of manoeuvre which were left to the Government, to the Prime Minister and to the Foreign Secretary, the Government have acted correctly and prudently in an extremely difficult situation.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: Is this convoluted?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: No; it is extremely clear. It is only the convoluted mind of the right hon. Gentleman that is unable to comprehend the distinction that I am making.
While it is right for hon. Members to speak freely, as they are not burdened with the responsibilities of office, that is not possible for those who are charged with conducting our foreign policy. The first matter to be considered was the need to protect British citizens. The Foreign Secretary, having considered the matter carefully, decided that they were not placed in such danger by the events so as to assume that their safety could be secured only by immediate intervention.
When looking ahead to possible developments in the crisis, preventive action was taken when HMS Antrim was moved into position, as an insurance policy, in case emergency action was needed. I see nothing to condemn in the Foreign Secretary's action.
Secondly, the Government made it clear to the United States Government that they believed that their action was unwise, and we counselled against it. That advice was rejected. The fact that the advice was rejected is not the responsibility of the Government. What on earth were the Government meant to do? What would the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) do in such circumstances? Were we to declare war on the United States because it did not accept our advice? Britain is entitled, both as a nation and as an ally, to give advice but not to impose that advice on an ally.
Thirdly, on seeing our prudent advice rejected, the Foreign Secretary realised that further damage could occur to the Alliance, on which the security of the world depends, if he had denounced the United States in intemperate terms. He might have avoided a few cheap jeers from Opposition Members and earned some cheap cheers. However, they would have been earned at the price of jeopardising the security of the free world.
Throughout this crisis the right hon. Member for Leeds, East—

Mr. Martin Flannery: The right hon. Gentleman is winding his way back to the fold.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I am not trying to enter any fold. I have one of my own.

Mr. Flannery: It sounds as though that is what the right hon. Gentleman is trying to do.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: The hon. Gentleman seems to think that other people's motives are as low as his. I am speaking my mind—[Interruption.]

Mr. Dave Nellist: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman is not giving way.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I am willing to give way to the hon. Gentleman if it was he who interrupted.

Mr. Nellist: The right hon. Gentleman has used the expression "free world" to describe the conditions pertaining in Grenada. What freedom can exist on that island when the per capita income is £400 per year?

Mr. Speaker: Order. That sounds more like a speech than a question.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: There is a clear distinction between political freedom and economic prosperity. They may be linked, and I hope that the Grenadians will enjoy both in due course, but I do not wish to be led astray into a discussion of that kind.
The right hon. Member for Leeds, East has sought throughout to squeeze the last drop of party political advantage out of the crisis. That has been the case when we have heard him in the House and when we have heard him on television. I was astounded when he referred in the House yesterday to Grenada as a territory subject to the Queen. He knows that any advice tendered to the Queen in the present constitutional position can be given only by Ministers of the Grenadian Government. The British Government have no status, and the Queen has no status in the matter unless she is being advised by the Grenadian Government. For the right hon. Gentleman to pose as a champion of the palace is unconvincing.
The right hon. Gentleman's stance has unleashed the anti-American feeling that is strong in many Labour Members and, apparently, among members in other parts of the House. That sentiment came out in the speech of the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn). The right hon. Member for Leeds, East does not share that feeling, and it was his duty to attempt to restrain rather than to encourage it.
Damage has undoubtedly been done to the Alliance. The first duty of the Government is to seek to repair that damage as quickly and effectively as possible. It is right that we should make our views known through diplomatic channels, but it would not be right for the Foreign Secretary to stand at the Dispatch Box and condemn the United States. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] That is not the place to do it.
The Foreign Secretary has to balance the existing situation against the other interests involved in the Western Alliance, and that is what he has done. He has not condoned or supported the American action and he has made it clear that there are other interests to be considered besides those involved in the immediate crisis.
We must certainly work for the early withdrawal of foreign troops from Grenada and for the early reestablishment of constitutional government. I believe that those are the objectives that the Government have set for themselves. It is easier to state those objectives than to achieve them, but I believe that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary are working towards them and that they deserve the support of the House in their efforts.

Mr. John Fraser: I went to a large West Indian gathering at Lambeth town hall on Saturday night where there was a sense of sorrow and outrage at the murder of Maurice Bishop. His Government was not free of blemishes in the erosion of human rights—everyone ought to recognise that—and it was not democratic, but it was a popular Government and, whatever the political persuasion of those at the gathering on Saturday, they shared a sense of outrage.
A sense of outrage at the American invasion has been added to those feelings. The invasion disregarded any courtesy towards the British Government and all the conventions about the territorial integrity of states. Therefore, I express the outrage of West Indians and the much wider outrage of the whole community.
There has been a breach of international law and there is grave anxiety, underlined by the Labour party for a long time, about whether we can trust the United States in matters involving international co-operation. There are lessons to be learnt in relation to cruise missiles.
Let me underline the major anxieties. The fact that there has been a breach of territorial integrity goes almost without saying, but an extension of that principle should be underlined. People say—perhaps unjustifiably—that if the United States can intervene in such a heavy-handed manner, disregarding the views of the British Government, why can they not exercise some influence in, for example, Haiti, which has suffered the erosion of human rights for so long and from which, incidentally, Eric Gairy was learning a trick or two before he was deposed in 1979?
Why could not the Americans exercise some influence or intervene in Chile or in Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador? Why is it only in states such as Grenada—small, Left and black — that there is this sort of condescending intervention, which would not be tolerated in other countries with different political persuasions and a different kind of population?
The third anxiety is how we can trust the United States in any matters in which we are supposed to have an accommodation. In this case, there were about four days for consultation. We were assured at Question Time on Monday that there was no question of an American military intervention. When cruise or Trident missiles are involved, there will not be four days for consultation; there may be only four minutes. If we cannot get an accommodation and have an honest agreement between allies in present circumstances, how can we believe that it could be done in other circumstances?
I am not expressing animosity towards Americans. It is inevitable that our two countries, with a common culture and language, are tied together, rather like East and West Germany. [Interruption.] I meant that light-heartedly. However, we must counsel the Americans on the way in which they behave.
If Fidel Castro and Yuri Andropov had got together to construct a propaganda exercise, they could not have done better than President Reagan has done this week. The Americans have thrown away all the moral advantage that they possessed over Afghanistan, but they have done much worse than that. They have sown the seeds of a whirlwind in the Caribbean. This is the first time that the United States Government have interfered overtly in a British Caribbean country.
That is a significant development, and although support for the Americans has been expressed by several independent Caribbean states, the United States has created a legend and it will reap the effects of it in the years to come. The Americans will not always have friendly Governments in Jamaica and close allies in Barbados. They have created a legend in Bernard Coard. He will become a hero, perhaps not tomorrow or the day after, but certainly in the months and years to come. No doubt he will be taken out of the Soviet embassy and off to Russia. He will become like some of the heroes in Africa.
There are lessons to be learnt. First, once democracy starts to deteriorate, it is extremely difficult to restore it. There was no way of getting rid of Eric Gairy except by a military coup. Without a restoration of democracy, the only way to get rid of Bishop was another coup. I am not approving of coups; I am simply saying that we have to pay careful attention to the way in which democracy can so quickly, sometimes almost inexorably, deteriorate.
I end with a Jamaican proverb which is relevant to what President Reagan has done in Nicaragua, El Salvador and other parts of central America. The Jamaicans say:
The higher monkey climb, the more he expose him ras.
President Reagan has exposed his ras on this occasion. He has also done something that I have seen monkeys do at Whipsnade zoo. To put it proverbially, he has urinated over the Foreign Secretary. It is a strange irony that President Reagan should turn our Foreign Secretary into a wet.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Before I call the next speaker I must tell the House that the Opposition Front Bench spokesman wants to begin to reply to this important debate at 6.35 pm. Brief contributions will enable me to call more hon. Members.

6 pm

Mr. Ivor Stanbrook: The American Government have chosen to defend their actions on three grounds. First, they have said that they are there to protect innocent lives. That is a genuine and important consideration but there is no evidence to justify it. The evidence does not show that acute state of affairs which might have justified it. Secondly, they have spoken of restoring order. That is a dangerous doctrine which could be applied elsewhere by people of whom we do not approve. Non-interference in the internal affairs of independent states is the fundamental principle of international law and the United Nations charter. Thirdly, they quote such justification as there might be from the existence of a regional pact. That is perhaps the most dangerous doctrine of all, because there are other regional pacts around the world involving Communist powers which have been invoked by the Soviet Union as a justification for invading its neighbours.
However, we must accept that a state is entitled to regard a situation as affecting its vital interests to such an extent that it feels justified in acting in the way in which the United States has. It is a great pity that the Government have not recognised that that is the real case for the United States. It is not necessary for the Government to be an apologist for the United States when the United States justifies its actions on unreal grounds.
The United States is determined to prevent the growth in Grenada of a power base serving the interests of Soviet Russia. It is applying the Monroe doctrine and the doctrine of the sphere of influence. In that sense it is acting in the time-honoured way in which great powers have acted throughout history. It is better for us to recognise that and consider what justification there is for action on those grounds than to go on attempting to justify it in the way in which my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary has.
The biggest consequence that arises from the way in which the United States is trying to justify its action is that it makes it more difficult to denounce the Soviet Union for its invasions of Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. There is some hypocrisy in United States propaganda in that respect.
Equally, it is foolish for United States politicians to compare, as we have heard some do recently, this situation with the Falklands. There is no such parallel because the Falklands were and are our territory and the Falkland islanders are our citizens. They were seized from us and they had to be recovered. It is not at all the same as an invasion of an independent state.
What lessons can we learn from this experience? The first is that we cannot trust the United States to support us in all circumstances when its interests differ from ours. It dithered at first over the Falklands. We cannot ultimately rely upon it and therefore we must be prepared to defend our vital interests ourselves and, if necessary, to go it alone. We can do without cruise if necessary but we cannot do without our own nuclear deterrent.
Secondly, we should pause before undertaking any future joint ventures for friendship's sake. If British interests are not directly involved, we should not support the United States in its ventures around the world, whether in Lebanon, in central America or in the position that we have established over Belize.
Thirdly, we cannot go on condemning Soviet Russia and at the same time applaud the United States when each side is merely defending its own interests. Let us cooperate more with our friends and neighbours in Europe whose interests are more similar to ours.
My final point has already been raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas). In trying to help clear up the mess that has been caused we must remember that Grenada is an independent sovereign state, a member of the United Nations and of the Commonwealth. Grenada paid us the compliment of adopting our Queen as its Queen when it became independent; therefore, she is its head of state. However, we have no right to interfere. The right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) was wrong when he said on the wireless this morning that the Queen must order the Governor-General to instal a new Government. The Queen has no such role. She has no right to suggest that any such move should be undertaken. That would lead only to a misunderstanding.

Mr. Healey: rose—

Mr. Stanbrook: I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will want to correct me in due course, but perhaps he will allow me to explain my point first.
The Governor-General has been appointed on the authority of the Queen as Head of State, but he takes his orders from the Ministers in Grenada, not from the Queen.
The only position in which the Queen becomes relevant is when it may be necessary to appoint a new Governor-General. In that event the appointment must be made on the advice of Ministers in Grenada. The United Kingdom Government have no role to play in that and the Queen has a role only as the Queen of Grenada, not of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Healey: With great respect, it was not I, but the Foreign Secretary, who said that the Governor-General should play a role in forming a new Government. I said that President Reagan had suggested that the Governor-General should do that and that he had no right to do so because the Governor-General was not responsible to the President of the United States.

Mr. Stanbrook: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, but he has forgotten precisely what he said about this matter. He has made so many statements lately about British subjects in Grenada, and so on, that he does not realise that he has fallen into error and contributed to a misunderstanding, an example of which he has just given us.
Grenada is not a colony; it is an independent sovereign state. The Queen's position there is not related to her position as Queen of the United Kingdom. The right hon. Gentleman said this morning that the Queen must act in a certain way. but she must do no such thing. It does not serve the interests of peace for someone of the right hon. Gentleman's status to add to the confusion and misunderstanding.
The Government's position in this affair has been honourable. They are doing their best but they are ill advised to follow the United States line in justifying what has been done. This is a straightforward case of power politics. We must accept the realities but press as soon as possible for the restoration of the original position and non-interference in the affairs of sovereign independent states.

Mr. George Foulkes: I do not have enough knowledge to comment on what the hon. Gentleman has just said about the attitude of the Queen, but I hazard a guess that she has been greatly disappointed by the pathetic performance of her Foreign Secretary today.
I can provide a little more evidence in support of the contention of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) that the invasion was to a large extent preplanned and premeditated, and that the Foreign Secretary was naive—to say the least—when he said on Tuesday that only on Monday evening had the American Government given serious consideration to military action, and that their decision had been taken only on Tuesday morning. Does anyone seriously believe that the American marines could have been in action as quickly as that?
Strong evidence obtained by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on our visit to Grenada shows that, even before the coup and the assassination of Maurice Bishop, the United States was planning for just such an invasion. I would not be able to advance evidence that the coup was engineered by the CIA in order to justify the invasion, but such things have happened.
The right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) listed all the reasons which, in his and the

Americans view, might justify such an invasion. Hon. Members who visited Grenada will recall that representatives of the Grenadian Government pointed out to us that in August and September 1981 the Americans carried out an exercise called Amber and the Amberines at the military base of Viequez in Puerto Rico, during which they planned, prepared and rehearsed an invasion exactly like the one that has just taken place. It involved reference to a point "Amber" which corresponded exactly to the airport where the invasion took place. The ranger troops, who landed at Port Salines, had been involved in that exercise. I am looking at the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths), because he was there too.
What was predicted when we visited Grenada in March last year has now happened. There is strong evidence to support the view that the invasion was preplanned and premeditated, but neither the Foreign Secretary nor any other member of the Government has yet told us whether the Americans have been deceiving our Government or whether our Government—and the Foreign Secretary in particular—have been deceiving the House. I hope that we shall be given a reply to that question today.
We have heard references to the reasons for the invasion. There can be no reasons for such a blatant breach of the United Nations charter; there can only be excuses. But the aim of restoring democracy is the most pathetic excuse imaginable. Some of my hon. Friends have already spoken about Gairy's regime. Who decides which democracies are acceptable? I do not want the Americans to be the arbiters of what is acceptable. Gairy maintained his power with the help of the mongooose gang—the night ambush squad which struck terror into the people of Grenada. That is not what I call democracy. That is not a democracy that I would wish to restore.
I hope that, even if the Foreign Secretary makes no other unequivocal declaration today, he will make an unequivocal declaration that we will not countenance the possibility of the automatic return of Sir Eric Gairy. That suggestion is being made. I heard Gairy on the radio today. He is staying in San Diego and being looked after by the Americans. He is ready to return, and I am sure that his return is part of the plan. I hope that our Government will give an unequivocal declaration that they will not countenance the return of that dictator.
Gairy was not only a dictator. When the coup in which he was deposed took place, he was at the United Nations trying to persuade it to set up a special committee on flying saucers. Not even hon. Members opposite are as loony as Sir Eric Gairy. Some hon. Members opposite were impressed by his knighthood, but we have been told that he recommended himself for the knighthood and the Queen could not refuse it.
On another occasion we must devote more time to the question whether we can automatically assume that Westminster democracy is the only kind of democracy. Is Westminster democracy automatically the right kind for a small island where it is difficult to maintain, or even to countenance, the neutrality of the Civil Service? With such a small population, people live in each other's pockets. Westminster democracy is not necessarily the only or the most appropriate kind.

Mr. Russell Johnston: Will the hon. Gentleman at least make it clear that he believes in regular elections, whatever form the democracy may take?

Mr. Foulkes: I am happy to make that clear. Indeed, both Government and Opposition members of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee made it clear to the representatives of the Grenada Government that regular elections were an essential part of democracy.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: indicated assent.

Mr. Foulkes: My hon. Friend confirms what I have said. If we accept that justification for an invasion, where will we end?
One of the most depressing aspects of this debate and of the two Government statements yesterday is that the Foreign Secretary has said nothing about the future. He has merely tried, inadequately, to justify his lack of action in the past. The Americans say that they will move out as quickly as they moved in. How many times have we heard that before? How many times have we seen American troops move in, intending to move out again quickly, but remaining not for weeks or months but in some cases for years? It is easy to move troops in; it is not so easy to move them out again.
I hope that the Foreign Secretary will make a clear declaration about what is to happen now. What has he done during the past few hours while he has been absent from the Chamber? What is he telling the Americans ought to happen in the future? The House would like to know that, even though the Government have acted pathetically in the past, they will be more resolute in the future.

Mr. Spearing: Does my hon. Friend not agree that many Caribbean politicians made clear to the members of the Select Committee their regret that the United Kingdom had no firm policy in the area and their view that the United Kingdom's lack of enthusiasm was creating a political vacuum?

Mr. Foulkes: I endorse that point, which was also made earlier in the debate by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) and in the report of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, where it received a pathetic response from the Government. If this is an example of the resolute approach that we hear so much about from the Government, this country is in a sorry state.

Sir Peter Blaker: In February 1974 I visited Grenada as a junior Foreign Office Minister and handed over the instruments of independence. I have therefore followed with interest and concern the events in that country in recent weeks. I hope that Grenada will emerge from its recent travails in peace and with freedom. Apropos of the remarks of the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnor and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes), I should be very surprised if anybody except himself hopes to see Eric Gairy as Prime Minister again.

Mr. Foulkes: That "himself" is Sir Eric Gairy—not me.

Sir Peter Blaker: There is no comparison between the problem of the control of cruise missiles in this country and the situation in Grenada. The cruise missiles will come to this country at the invitation of the European countries. Their use will be governed by arrangements that have survived for more than 30 years and have been regarded as satisfactory by successive Labour and Conservative Governments. These arrangements have recently been

reviewed. They mean that no missiles can be fired or launched without the agreement of the British Prime Minister. I mean agreement, not consultation. Those arrangements have recently been confirmed as valid and satisfactory by both sides.
In contrast, Grenada is an independent country that lies close to the United States of America. As far as I know, there is no agreement or convention that obliges the United States to consult us about its actions in respect of that country. Nevertheless, the United States consulted us, and we advised it that we were against the action proposed. However, the Americans rejected our advice. The surprising fact is that some hon. Members—particularly Opposition Members—seem astonished that our advice is sometimes rejected by the United States. Many hon. Members seem to assume that we have the right to tell the United States what it should do, even about a country that is much closer to the United States than to us and to expect the United States to accept it. Some hon. Members have even described the Americans' rejection of our advice as a betrayal. That is farcical.
The right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) said that the failure of Her Majesty's Government to prevent the American and Caribbean action was a dereliction of duty. Perhaps he did not think about what he said. If he thinks about it he will realise that he must have taken leave of his senses to say it. It cannot be a dereliction of duty that we made our views clear and that they were rejected — unwisely in my view — by the United States.
It is said that our advice should have been accepted in particular because Grenada is a Commonwealth country. But there are about 45 Commonwealth countries and that is one third of all the countries in the world. Is that proposition valid for them all? If so. we shall have much more influence in the world than we have had in recent times. It is to me a wholly novel doctrine that if the United States is concerned. in the formation of its foreign policy, with a Commonwealth country it must do what we say. I should very much welcome that, but it is very unlikely to happen. Indeed, just to propound the idea demonstrates that it is ridiculous.
Our action has shown that those who claim that this Government slavishly follow the policies of the American Government are wrong. We are not—in this case or in any other—the slavish supporters of the United States. Disagreements between the United States and this country from time to time are inevitable, because we are both free countries. Our relationship with the United States is not like that of Bulgaria with the Soviet Union. Bulgaria has no option but to do what it is told. We have our own view. There are bound to be differences between free countries just as there are differences between Members of free Parliaments. However, an association of free countries is in the long run much stronger than an association of countries that rests on compulsion, as does the Warsaw Pact.
The people of Grenada have not had a chance, during the past four years at least, to express their views. I do not think that they had much chance to express them under Eric Gairy before that. I hope that they will soon have the chance once more to express their views. I welcome the fact that Secretary of State Shultz has said that it is the intention of the United States to remove its forces from Grenada as soon as possible. I believe that it would be reasonable for the troops of the Caribbean countries


involved to remain somewhat longer, if that is the wish of the people of Grenada. I believe, too, that there may be a bigger role for the Commonwealth when we begin—I hope in the not-too-distant future—to set the scene for free elections in that country. It is clear, too, that there will be a role for the Governor-General in that election.
Finally, if the events of yesterday lead to the restoration of democracy in Grenada, some good will have come from this affair.

Mr. Allan Roberts: In some respects Grenada is similar to Bootle. Give or take a couple of thousand, Grenada has roughly the same population and 60 per cent. to 70 per cent. of the people are practising Roman Catholics. The rest are Protestants, most of whom go to church. Before the curfews and the murder of Bishop, Whiteman and the other Ministers, one could see children wearing their church school uniforms going to church at 8 am or 8.30 am. The traditions of the Catholic church were introduced from Britain, and the traditions of the Church of England were safeguarded in Grenada under the Bishop regime. Thus, to say that there are similarities between Bootle and Grenada in the size of the population and in its attitude — despite the fact that the Grenadians are black and my constituents are of Irish descent—is not that far from the truth.
The subject of this debate is Grenada, but a parallel has already been drawn with Afghanistan. I am one of the few hon. Members to have visited both countries. Before any misconceptions about my attitude towards Afghanistan at the time of my visit and afterwards are thrown at me, I should like to quote from the press release that I and my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Litherland) issued within two days of our return from that fact-finding visit:
Our visit to Afghanistan has further reinforced our strongly held view that social change, social reforms and Socialism cannot be carried through or implemented by the gun and tank but only by consent and democratic processes through the ballot box. We call on the Soviet Government to withdraw its troops immediately from Afghanistan.
Social change, social reforms and Socialism cannot be implemented by the gun and the tank, nor can democracy be imposed on an independent sovereign country by a foreign country using the gun and the tank. That is exactly what is being attempted now, and it has its exact parallel in the Soviet position in Afghanistan. If the Foreign Secretary condemns one — just as I condemned Afghanistan after my visit—he must condemn the other.

Mr. Patrick Nicholls: If the hon. Gentleman is saying that the one occupation is as bad as the other, he should take into account the nature of that occupation. The Americans — in my opinion, quite wrongly — seek to impose Western democracy on another country. However, only yesterday the press reported that the occupiers of Afghanistan had slaughtered hundreds of men and women and had bayoneted about 12 innocent children. Surely the hon. Gentleman agrees that the two forms of occupation are not in any way comparable?

Mr. Roberts: I also read that story in the The Guardian, which came from a rebel source and was not confirmed by other diplomatic sources. Therefore, we must put on one side the question whether there is any veracity in that report. If the stories are true, they are to

be condemned. However, I believe that democracy will not be restored and that there will not be an election in the foreseeable future in Grenada as a result of this invasion. I have visited Grenada and have traversed the terrain. It is just as it has been described by other Opposition Members, and it is very suitable for guerrilla activity. If troops go in with the gun and the tank to impose democracy, particularly given that small island's recent history, they are unlikely to succeed. Such action will probably result in a superimposed regime that is a puppet of the United States of America.
The right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. JohnStevas) criticised my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) for making party political capital out of this issue. I thought that that was what the Americans were claiming they were trying to do in Grenada—create an environment in which there was an opposition that could make party political capital without which there is no democracy. I make no excuse for making party political capital out of this issue.
The right hon. Member for Chelmsford asked what we expect the Foreign Secretary to do. I believe that the Government and the Foreign Secretary should do three things. First, the Foreign Secretary should make the statement that was made by the right hon. Member for Chelmsford. The idea that because a person is in government he cannot speak the truth denigrates politics. If, as the right hon. Member for Chelmsford said, the Americans acted wrongly, the Foreign Secretary should say so.
Secondly, the Foreign Secretary should tell us that the British Government will condemn the American action and vote for a resolution along those lines in the United Nations. The Foreign Secretary should also tell the Americans to keep their cruise missiles, because we know now that we shall not be consulted before they are used.
Many myths have been presented about Grenada. When I was there, I told members of the Government — Maurice Bishop and Whiteman—that they should hold elections. I had no doubt when travelling the country as a tourist, not just as a parliamentarian, that it was a popular Government. If the Government had held an election, they would have won. We do not know why they did not.
I condemn the coup d'etat and the murders of Bishop, Whiteman and the others that led to the excuse for the American invasion. I am sure that the coup d'etat would not have occurred but for the destabilisation of Grenada and its economy by the American and British Governments. I have no doubt that the airport, which was planned when Grenada was a Commonwealth country under Sir Eric Gairy, would have been built by the Americans and the British if we had responded to Bishop's request. Bishop was forced to go to the Cubans because we cut off all assistance. Cubans are stationed there, but so are Canadians. Canada is one country that did not cut off aid. It has sent advisers there to reconstitute the cocoa crop. I believe that there are more Canadians than Cubans on Grenada. Bishop and his Government went anywhere they could to get help.

Sir Anthony Kershaw: I hope that the hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Roberts) will forgive me if I do not follow his thoughts in the few minutes that I have. The interests and advantages of the state are what should inspire foreign policy. We must also allow the United


States that way of making up its mind. The United States was faced with the creation of a military airfield in a strategically sensitive part of the world. I do not go for the excuse that the Americans were rescuing their citizens because, like my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook), I do not believe that they were in danger. Nor do I go for the idea that we must divide the world into goodies and baddies. We must deal with goodies as well as baddies, and we must make our own policy.
The military airfield was important. It was provocative for Grenada and its backers to place that airport there and to dedicate it to an obvious use. This was bound to make the United States react. I suppose that Grenada and its backers thought that they could have it both ways. If the United States did nothing, it was threatened by a military airfield; if the United States reacted, Grenada had a good propaganda point. The United States had a good propaganda point, but it has had to pay a price for what it has done. It reasonably decided that its safety depended upon that action.
It is natural that there should be some difference between the policies of the British and the United States' Governments in that part of the world. We are much further away from Grenada than the United States and we have less influence, except historically and linguistically than we used to. A small proportion of our trade is with that part of the world. We must face the fact that our natural interests in that region are different from those of the United States.
It is not true to say that because our advice has been rejected on this occasion by the United States we cannot rely upon it ever to take our advice about cruise. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Sir P. Blaker) said, the arrangements for cruise are entirely different. In that matter our interests are the same, whereas in Grenada our interests are different from those of the United States.
If we can remember after this crisis that fundamentally we and the United States and the safety of us both depend upon our understanding each other and on co-operation then this setback will not have been entirely bad.

Mr. Healey: The House must agree that this has been a worthwhile debate, although it has brought little comfort to the Government, who were described by a senior Conservative Back Bencher with Foreign Office experience as being guilty of a pallid abdication of duty. That is a reasonable description of the Government's behaviour.
We heard a thoughtful maiden speech from the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Walden) which was informed by his great experience of foreign affairs. We look forward to hearing him again.
From the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) we had his familiar impersonation of General de Gaulle, and there was an equally familiar performance from the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) as Obadiah Slope.
I am afraid that the Foreign Secretary did little this afternoon to redeem his reputation. He made it clear that there was imminent risk of military intervention by the United States in Grenada since the United States was issued with the formal invitation by the east Caribbean

Commonwealth countries at their meeting in Barbados. Barbados was obviously involved in it, although not a member of the organisation.
It is a reasonable belief that the invitation to the United States Government was formal, unlike the invitation to the British Government, according to the Foreign Secretary, because the United States had put these countries up to it. It had organised the invitation.
The Government have made it clear—or have they? Yes, they have—in the past three days that they thought the United State's planned course of action was disastrously mistaken, but when the imminence of possible invasion was apparent to everyone except the Foreign Secretary the Government did nothing about it for three whole days.
It is not surprising, therefore, that President Reagan was able to tell American Senators on Monday that the British Government were in support of his course of action. The Government should have recognised the danger. There were many courses open to them. They could have mobilised opposition from Commonwealth countries, not just in the Caribbean, such as Trinidad and Belize, but from Canada, which has strongly condemned the action in the past 24 hours, and from friendly countries in the area outside the Commonwealth, such as Mexico, which has been compelled, at some risk to its position, to condemn the action in the Security Council debate.
The real charge against the Government is that they had formed a view of the circumstances. They believed that the Americans were wrong, that the Americans might be invading an independent state in the Commonwealth, but they did absolutely nothing to prevent it. In other words, they have replaced megaphone diplomacy with doormat diplomacy.
No one who has listened to the Foreign Secretary during the past three days can fail to reach the conclusion that throughout the whole miserable affair the Government have shown themselves lacking in grip, fibre and resolution and, like the pusillanimous pussyfooting of the Foreign Secretary in trying to explain how he did not really agree with the Americans, but did not think it proper to say so, their behaviour must be profoundly distasteful to anyone who cares for the dignity of Great Britain in world affairs.
Unless the Foreign Secretary can assure us when he replies that the Government, who will be called upon to express a view at the end of the Security Council debate which is now under way, are prepared to express their opposition to American policy and to call for the immediate withdrawal of the invading forces, as they did under similar circumstances over the Falklands 18 months ago, I shall ask the House to vote against the motion.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: By leave of the House, Mr. Speaker, I begin my reply to the debate by joining the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) in welcoming my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Walden) and congratulating him on his contribution to our debate. I endorse what the right hon. Gentleman said—that my hon. Friend made a distinguished, well-informed contribution to a debate on a subject about which he knows a great deal, and we look forward to hearing him again.
I must tell the House about the circumstances that have arisen in Grenada during the course of the day. We have heard from the high commission in Barbados that it is once


again possible for civilians to go safely to Grenada. The first such civilians that we shall be sending will be a consular team to determine the whereabouts and circumstances of British citizens on the island and to explore the possibilities of bringing out those who may wish to leave. That news in itself is a promising development.
During the debate, the wisdom of the action of the United States Government and of our own position has been investigated and questioned from a number of different points of view. It is no part of my intention today to defend each and every attitude of the United States Government, but I shall address myself to the questions raised about the actions of Her Majesty's Government.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery), in his thoughtful analysis, suggested that all questions of this kind should be considered by reference to one criterion—whether the action being taken or not taken serves the ultimate outcome of the great ideological conflict, which he says prevails in the world. He said that there was room in this matter for only one view. It must be said that in the conflict that is taking place between the democracies of the West and of the Soviet Union and her allies, judgments must also he made about the proper place and position of independent states and of the interests of those independent states, including, for example, those in the Caribbean which do not agree with the action of the United States.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Sir A. Kershaw) drew attention to the fact that there were special reasons for the United States to take a different view, together with some of the other Caribbean states, on what ought to be done in this case. We did not agree with that, and clearly expressed a different position. My right hon. Friend the Member for Pavilion—in the phrase that the right hon. Member for Leeds, East sought to mobilise in his speech about a "pallid abdication of duty" —suggested that once we had formed a view different from that of the United States we should have expressed our dissent more loudly and vigorously. I understand those who take that view.
However, I do not believe that it would have served my right hon. Friend's purpose, or this country's, or the common interests of ourselves and of the United States, for us to have amplified and magnified our views. We could not have done more to make our position clear. There was no need to do more in the way that is suggested.

Mr. Amery: I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend will understand that when I said that there were two courses open all that I was anxious to do was to prevent him falling between two stools.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: No such preventative was necessary. We made our position clear.
The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) put his argument in the simple analysis with which he urged the Government, on the one hand, to avoid undue fondness and, on the other, to avoid undue loathing. It should be clear from the way in which we have approached this affair that we were not following either position. Our view was not the same as that of the Americans, as we made clear to them. There was no question of undue fondness unfluencing our judgment in that respect.
Those who have spoken from the Opposition Benches include the leader of the Liberal party. The right hon.
Gentleman showed some understanding of the difficulties of the decision that faced the United States and the Caribbean countries to intervene in Grenada, but he questioned the wisdom of their action and its legal justification. In reply, it must be said that it is primarily for those who have carried out the operation, not Her Majesty's Government, to undertake a detailed justification of their action.
Taking account of all the legal and practical considerations, and of the interests of our citizens and their safety in these circumstances, we came to a different conclusion, as I explained to the House. We would not dispute that a state has the right in international law to take appropriate action to safeguard the lives of its citizens where there has been a breakdown of law and order, nor that there is any provision in the charter of the United States that makes it unlawful to take such action. Those are the considerations that no doubt the United States and those acting with it must have had in mind. We took a different view of all the circumstances that apply in this case.
The right hon. Member for Leeds, East also asked about the attitude that we should be adopting towards action in the United Nations. In his first speech he offered a prescription for the kind of action that we should have taken, and he reinforced that in his second contribution. He argued that we should plainly condemn the action that has been taken and call for the withdrawal of United States forces. That is not a position that her Majesty's Government find it appropriate to adopt.
This action has now been taken by a number of countries which are our allies. It has been taken for reasons which it is for them to explain, but, above all, to initiate and carry through a process for restoring the prospect of democracy in a Commonwealth country. As I said earlier., the forces of a number of Commonwealth countries, as well as those of the United States, are now engaged in action to achieve that end. It would not serve the prospect of restoring democracy in Grenada if we were now to urge the withdrawal of forces engaged in that process.
The final form of the resolution that will be discussed in the United Nations has not become clear. All that we have seen so far is the first draft of the first resolution to be tabled. I make it plain that we shall not be supporting that resolution. When we see the final shape of the resolution, I shall be in a position to form the view of Her Majesty's Government, and the House of Commons will be able to judge that then.

Mr. Robert Hughes: rose——

Sir Geoffrey Howe: Apart from those who have questioned the positon in that way, there are those on the Labour Benches, and the right hon. Member for Leeds, East is one, who have paid scant regard to the way in which what is now taking place will affect the prospects for democracy and constitutional rule in Grenada and little attention to the interests and legitimate concern expressed by other Commonwealth countries. Grenada's neighbours are concerned about the way in which the island was being and would be run in the light of the latest coup. Labour Members who have concentrated on attacking the United States and its President are wrong. Such attacks are of no service to the interests of this country or of any other country.

Mr. Andrew Faulds: Find somebody else for the job.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: In our assessment of our reaction to this decision there is no question of our taking any blind view of fidelity to the United States. We have formed our judgment of the prospects, we have expressed our view that the action should not have been undertaken and we have not initiated action to support it. It could only be a matter for regret that Labour Members have relished the deployment of an anti-American case for its own sake.
The right hon. Member for Leeds, East said that it was not anti-American to suggest that President Reagan had broken the whole post-war tradition of acting on the basis of co-operation and consensus with the allies. He argued, in an absurd phrase, that the President of the United States is following a unilateralist policy which is creating danger for the world. It must be clear that the right hon. Gentleman has been delighted, to his shame, to use this debate as an occasion for pandering to anti-American sentiments. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] Indeed, in his speech the right hon. Gentleman seemed more concerned to attack the United States Administration than to discuss Grenada.
As for the claim that President Reagan has broken with the whole post-war tradition of acting in concert with the allies, that is, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, an entirely facile and unworthy proposition. As has been said in this debate, there have been differences in the past between the views taken by the allies, and there have been differences between the views taken by the United States and Great Britain. There have been such differences, and there will be such differences again, because they are inevitable in any alliance. It is an inevitable feature, because the North Atlantic Alliance is one of free states committed, among other things, to defend their right to disagree with one another. Would that such a right were defended by the Warsaw pact, where dissent is crushed by tanks before a day or two have passed. If there were such a change in the position within the North Atlantic Alliance, we should acquire the characteristics of the Warsaw pact. That might suit some Opposition Members, but it must be said that it does not serve the interests of the British people.
The suggestion that the American Administration are following a unilateralist policy — which Opposition Members normally support and which on this occasion crept into the speech of the right hon. Member for Leeds, East — is absolute rubbish. The close consultation between the members of the Alliance—[Interruption]—remains still an essential purpose of the Alliance.
The right hon. Member for Leeds, East also talked about servility. That, too, is utter nonsense. It is demonstrated by the fact that we disagreed with the view of the United States on this occasion and did not participate in the intervention. We formed our own conclusions. There is no trace of servility there.
I invite the House to reject the motion.

Hon. Members: "Resign."

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 211, Noes 336.

Question accordingly negatived.

Civil Defence

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Douglas Hurd): I beg to move,
That the draft Civil Defence (Grant) (Amendment) Regulations 1983, which were laid before this House on 12th July, be approved.

Mr. Speaker: I understand that it will be convenient to discuss also the following:
The draft Civil Defence (General Local Authority Functions) Regulations 1983.
The draft Civil Defence (Grant) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 1983.
The draft Civil Defence (General Local Authority Functions) (Scotland) Regulations 1983.

Mr. Hurd: Before I deal with the regulations, I shall describe briefly the civil defence policy into which they fit. It is a great pity that discussion of civil defence should be too often distorted by polemics which really belong elsewhere. Because of the horrors involved in any outbreak of war people are naturally reluctant to think clearly about civil defence. This makes it an easy subject for vague political emotion and a difficult subject for rational debate. If we could drain some of the politics out of the discussion on civil defence, which is our aim, we could see it for what it is — a humanitarian and commonsense effort to reduce suffering and loss of life in the unlikely event of a conventional or nuclear attack upon this country.
The first duty of a Government is, of course, to keep the peace. This Government believe that their policies for defence and for multilateral disarmament are well calculated to keep the peace. They have done so and will continue to do so. This is not the place to argue those policies so I shall simply add one point. Ours is not a policy of piling up armaments for their own sake. Tomorrow my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office will be speaking to the first committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations about our concept of multilateral disarmament. Having held his position until a few months ago, I believe that there is a reasonable chance of agreement on multilateral disarmament in the medium term provided that we do not lose our nerve and begin to dismantle our defences without a satisfactory agreement with the Soviet Union.
But whatever defence policy was adopted by the Government, there would be some risk that it might break down. We in Britain believe that we are safest with a deterrent and with full membership of the Atlantic Alliance. Sweden and Switzerland believe that they are safest without nuclear weapons and with a neutral status. We have a civil defence programme. The Swedes and Swiss have a civil defence programme. In rational debate about this uncertain world there should be no argument about the need for civil defence in case defence policy were to break down. But if there is to be civil defence it might as well be effective, and that is the aim of these draft regulations.
Under the 1948 Act, civil defence deals with armed attack. During the lifetime of this Parliament we shall change the legislation to carry out the undertaking in our election manifesto
to enable civil defence funds to be used in safeguarding peacetime emergencies as well as against hostile attacks".
Obviously this change cannot be made through regulations. It must wait for a Bill in future Sessions of this


Parliament. It nevertheless remains as a firm statement of intent designed to underpin our argument that civil defence is essentially a humanitarian policy.
If, against our expectation, the deterrent were to break down there would be a wide range of possible actions by the enemy who attacked us. There might be a period of conventional warfare, at the end of which diplomacy would stop the war. There might be a strike, as a demonstration, by a single nuclear weapon and such a weapon might be either small or big. Such a strike might be directed against a city or a military target. If hostilities went beyond a single strike a number of nuclear weapons might then be used, big or small, but no one can be sure which targets the enemy would choose.

Mr. Reg Freeson: What does the Minister mean by referring to the use of a small nuclear weapon? Will he define that a little more closely?

Mr. Hurd: For example, the SS20—[Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman does not seem to realise the thinking on this matter. We are now faced with the possibility of smaller, more accurate weapons. All these are mights. Civil defence must cope with a wide range of possibilities.

Mr. Ioan Evans: In the parlance of nuclear weapons, which are now a thousand times more destructive than the one dropped on Hiroshima, is not that bomb referred to as a small nuclear weapon?

Mr. Hurd: The hon. Gentleman is Missing the point. There is a wide range of possibilities, beginning with conventional warfare and stretching to a massive nuclear attack. Civil defence must deal with that range.
We are sometimes asked to be more precise in making assumptions about the expected scale and direction of attack. Of course it would be convenient in debate and planning if we could do so but the targets chosen and the methods used would depend not on us but on the political and military strategy of the enemy. In drawing up our plans we must provide the best information available to us so that planners can do their work effectively. But the range of possibilities in the unlikely event of attack is so wide that it would be wrong to start making up lists of targets or guiding the planners with arbitrary sets of assumptions.
It will in practice be necessary for every community and every major service to have a civil defence capacity. Areas which do not suffer the direct effects of attack may need to prepare against the indirect effects. Areas which suffer no effects will want to give support to those that are affected. So, although it would be convenient to be more precise, it would also in our judgment be intellectually dishonest.
Critics of civil defence often home in on the worst option as if it were the only one. But of course it is not. I cannot understand the logic of people who say—they have been saying it again in the past few days—that, because the consequences of a massive nuclear attack would be horrific, there is no point in planning, through civil defence, to deal with conventional warfare or a single nuclear strike. Civil defence would be justified for those purposes alone, even if it were true that there was nothing to be done by anybody in the event of a massive nuclear attack.
In fact, that is not true. In any nuclear attack there would be great destruction, enormous casualties and

unspeakable suffering. I need to say that obvious thing because the Government are sometimes accused of using civil defence to make nuclear warfare acceptable, as something that could be contemplated without horror. That is rubbish. Any form of modern warfare, particularly nuclear warfare, would be so terrible that it must be the first job of a Government to prevent it. I entirely agree with a sentence in a recent report of the Royal College of Nursing, which said that the prevention of the use of nuclear weapons is infinitely preferable to planning for the aftermath of their use. But the two thoughts are not contradictory—prevention of use and planning for the aftermath of use. The two thoughts go together.
However great the casualties in a nuclear attack, there would be millions of survivors. The ultimate survival and well-being of those millions would depend in large part on peacetime planning and training. That is what civil defence is about.

Mr. Alex Carlile: If the right hon. Gentleman is so much in favour of civil defence for the protection of the public, will he explain why, in the general local authority functions regulations, there is no provision for a single new structure for the protection of the public? Indeed, paragraph 4 of schedule 2 merely provides for the protection of the public, as opposed to the officials, by the utilisation of existing buildings and structures.

Mr. Hurd: I shall deal with that point when I come to the regulations themselves.
I should like to add a further few words about casualty estimates, because there has been a good deal of recent discussion on this matter. All estimates are bound to be uncertain and no one should claim a monopoly of wisdom. Much of the research and evidence comes from the United States and should be examined in the light of British conditions — for example, British houses tend to be somewhat more solid than American houses. [Interruption.] Why the giggles? Let us try to deal with facts.
The Home Office is carrying out further research, both into blast effects and radiation, and we hope to publish our findings on both during 1984. Others have been active in this work—for example, the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing.
I wish to refer at this point to the recent BMA report because of an episode connected with its publication. The reasons that I have already given about the range of risks show that we do not accept all the assumptions about the nature of an attack which are made in the BMA report. However, I was sad and sorry that a letter sent from the Home Office in April was taken by the authors of the BMA report as reflecting on their professional integrity. That was not the intention and I am indeed sorry that it should have had that effect.
Last week my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security and I had a very useful discussion with the BMA at which this point was raised. We asked the BMA to co-operate in planning to improve our medical preparedness in case of war, and the BMA agreed. I am glad to say that detailed discussions will now go ahead. We held a separate and similar meeting with the Royal College of Nursing and it, too, is to help in elaborating our medical plans. That is all good news.
Civil defence must be a partnership between central and local government, and local authorities have a vital role,


because theirs is the local knowledge and theirs are the resources that would have to be used and built upon in crises and in war. The existing civil defence planning regulations of 1974 and the 1975 Scottish equivalent put direct responsibility for civil defence on county, Scottish regional authorities and the Greater London council, while requiring districts to provide any information for which counties and the GLC ask in helping them to make plans.
As a result of the home defence review, the Government provided in 1980 for a substantial increase in expenditure and effort in civil defence. A number of authorities have since done as much as has been required of them and I should like to thank and congratulate them on their efforts. Others, unfortunately, have decided to pay no more than lip-service to civil defence, with the result that in many areas planning, training and exercises have been neglected.
We had hoped that encouragement, persuasion, advice and the allocation of more money to civil defence would lead to greater effort by these councils, but in several areas of the country this has not happened. Despite our efforts there are local authorities where plans are not kept in a state which would allow them quickly to be put into practice, where headquarters are not identified and equipped, where little or no training or exercising takes place and where little progress has been made in establishing community and voluntary organisations.
We believe that the Government have a responsibility to the country as a whole to bring about an acceptable level of civil defence everywhere. That is why we have introduced these draft regulations, which will place new, stronger and more precise obligations on all authorities.
The local authority associations and the Greater London council were consulted in drafting these regulations. A consultative paper was circulated to them. A draft followed and the Government received deputations representing each of the bodies we consulted. We listened and where we felt it right we made changes — in particular, a controversial requirement for local authority staff to perform civil defence duties has been dropped.
If Parliament approves the draft regulations we will issue an explanatory circular of guidance. This will need to be in the hands of local authorities as soon as the regulations come into effect, but I am proposing meanwhile to meet the GLC and local authority associations during November to consider the circular.
The draft regulations, of course, deal with local authorities as they now exist and will continue to exist for some time to come. The Government have this month published their White Paper "Streamlining the Cities" in which they propose among other things that boroughs and district councils should take over the present civil defence duties of the GLC and metropolitan counties and should be required to consult each other. Obviously there needs to be much further discussion of this and it will be some time before these proposals are in effect. We would not have been justified in holding up the present draft regulations on civil defence further. The work which the GLC and metropolitan counties will be required to do under these draft regulations can be bequeathed in good order to the authorities which will take over their civil defence functions.
The House is considering this evening two sets of regulations to cover England and Wales, the first setting

out civil defence functions, the second dealing with grant. Two other sets of regulations make similar provision for Scotland.

Sir Peter Emery: My right hon. Friend talked about a partnership between local and central Government, but should there not be a triumvirate between local government, central Government and the massive pool of volunteers who would come forward to assist if civil defence were properly organised? Will he look particularly at what has happened with the Devon emergency volunteers? There, more than 5,000 people, with very little aid from the local authority, have come forward to try to train themselves for emergencies of this nature.

Mr. Hurd: My hon. Friend is right and I shall be dealing with the role of volunteers. It is vital to underline that the whole enterprise, now and in the future, will depend to a large extent on volunteers, and it is highly satisfactory and a commentary on some of the artificial argument that goes on that so many thousands of people are willing to come forward as volunteers for civil defence.
The differences between these draft regulations and the 1974 regulations which they replace are that the 1974 regulations require local authorities only to make contingency plans, whereas the new regulations require them to keep their plans up to date. The importance of this is obvious. Old plans gathering dust in a filing cabinet are not likely to be much use. The activities for which plans are required are listed in schedule 2 and follow fairly closely the 1974 list.
There are, however, three new activities for which plans are to be prepared. Councils are asked to plan for using existing buildings as civil defence shelters for the public. That is new. They are asked to plan for a rescue service, and they are asked to plan for the participation of voluntary organisations and volunteers. A working party is now considering how the training of volunteers across the country can be made more uniform than it is at present, and Sir Leslie Mayor is in charge of that co-ordination.
Local authorities will also be required to provide emergency centres properly equipped with communications and other equipment. They will have a duty to train and exercise staff and to organise, train and exercise volunteers.
The Government are not thinking of, and have never thought of, any form of conscription of local government staff for civil defence. It is for the local authorities themselves, as employers, to decide how best to meet the requirements of the regulations, so the regulations deliberately place no specific obligation on individual staff members.

Rev. Martin Smyth: I understood the Minister to say that there was no compulsion on local authorities. I had the impression that local authority chief executives would take on the role of civil defence agents in an emergency. Who will provide the training for the trainers if the obligation is placed on them to provide training?

Mr. Hurd: I said that there was no obligation on individual local authority staff members. There are, of course, obligations on local authorities. That is what the draft regulations are about. The civil defence college at


Easingwold, near York, is the place where a wide range of courses and training is carried out, including that for the chief executives who might have to become controllers in the circumstances which the hon. Gentleman has in mind.
Powers exist in case a local authority fails or refuses to discharge any functions conferred on it. These powers derive from section 2(2)(c) of the Civil Defence Act 1948, of the post-war Labour Government. In those circumstances the Minister can either himself discharge the civil defence functions which have been neglected or authorise some other authority or person, for example a comissioner, to do so. In both cases this would be at the expense of the defaulting authority.
The powers exist, and if it becomes absolutely necessary we shall use them rather than see citizens of this country deprived of civil defence. But I wish to make it absolutely clear that we have no appetite for using these powers. We are not spoiling for a fight. We want to use reason and persuasion to achieve effective civil defence for this country. Because this is essentially a humanitarian policy, it can be separated from polemics on other matters. It should not be a matter of political colour. We hope that all responsible local authorities, whatever their political views, can co-operate in civil defence. We shall allow fair and reasonable time for this to be accomplished and at every stage we shall consult and remain open to suggestions.

Dr. Alan Glyn: Am I correct in saying that it is the chief executive who is in charge and that no elected representative is in charge of local civil defence but that they are all paid officials?

Mr. Hurd: I think that my hon. Friend is talking about the final stage of an attack when power is devolved to the controllers, and the elected representatives would act in an advisory capacity at that stage.
I must add a word about money, because much of the recent argument has revolved round that subject. The grant regulations before the House change existing grant regulations by extending the area of activity entitled to a 100 per cent. grant-aid compared with the present 75 per cent. The increased grant-aid of 100 per cent. will apply to communications and directly related equipment, the training and exercising of staff and the expenses of volunteers. Other civil defence activities remain entitled to grant-aid at 75 per cent. In addition, I can say that the Government will exempt additonal expenditure on civil defence by local authorities in 1983–84 from grant holdback which might otherwise be incurred.
Total central and local government spending on civil defence this year is expected to be about £69 million, of which about £15 million will be spent by local authorities. Additional public spending as a result of these new regulations is not expected to be more than about £2 million, more than three-quarters of which will be met by Home Office grant. Given the provisions which I have just explained, it cannot, I think, be argued that these requirements add in any significant way to the financial difficulties which local authorities may now face.

Mr. Stuart Holland: rose—

Mr. Hurd: I suspect that I am about to cover the point the hon. Gentleman wishes to raise.
I know that some local authorities are anxious that the new regulations will require them to build, at huge cost,

emergency centres. That is not the case. Local authorities are required by the draft regulations simply to designate existing premises which can offer enough protection against the effects of attack to enable essential local civil defence services to be continued. The Home Office will continue its present practice of approving for grant-aid schemes of reasonable cost for the adaptation, strengthening and equipping of such premises. That is what the requirement in the draft regulations has in mind. The costs of this work, as the experience of the authorities which have already been undertaking it shows, will be tens rather than hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Mr. Stuart Holland: The Minister seems proud of the fact that a sum of about £2 million will not add significantly to costs. Does he realise that it will not add significantly to civil defence? The British Medical Association has estimated that it will cost £180 billion, about two thirds of total national income, to blast-proof accommodation for the nation as a whole. He must realise that. by the same token that the sum is insignificant, the defence is non-existent.

Mr. Hurd: The hon. Gentleman is missing the point. We are not requiring local authorities to spend millions or billions of pounds on new resources. We are requiring them to plan effectively for the use of the resources which they already have, and buildings are an obvious example. We want them to plan so that, for example, buildings can be used to save lives and protect people while services are maintained in time of war. We are not asking for new expenditure on infrastructure. We are looking for intelligent and co-ordinated planning for the use of present resources. That is the basis of our civil defence policy and I think that it is a reasonable one.

Mr. Ioan Evans: rose—

Mr. Hurd: No, I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman, as I have given way to him already.
I have set out the responsibilities which we propose central and local government should assume for the better protection of those whom we represent. The proposals are modest in scope and I accept that it would be possible to do more, as some of my hon. Friends will doubtless urge. There is no lack of good ideas for using extra resources on civil defence and I look forward with interest to suggestions in this debate. However, as my hon. Friends know, we have to balance the preparations that we make and the money that we spend against the present low risk of war, and we do not believe that that risk is increasing.
We judge that the balance is about right. The concentration of our policy is on persuading and requiring the authorities concerned to plan intelligently for the use in wartime of the resources they already possess.
I suggest that this will be regarded as a policy of common sense and humanity by those who think clearly about it. That seems to be accepted by many thousands of citizens who volunteer already for various civil defence duties. For example, two weekends ago nearly 900 posts of the United Kingdom warning and monitoring organisation were manned for an exercise by volunteers of the Royal Observer Corps. They tested the equipment and the procedures which would warn us of attack and which would be used to calculate its impact. Nearly 9,000 volunteers gave up most of their Saturday night to this exercise throughout the country. I visited some of the posts


and they seemed a far cry from the heated arguments which have crippled so much public discussion on civil defence. The exercise was just an acceptd fact of service to the community for those who took part in it and who take part month in and month out in this voluntary activity.
If the worst were to come to the worst, of course everyone would help—

Mr. Ioan Evans: We would all be dead.

Mr. Hurd: It would not matter to the survivors how they had voted, what their professional bodies had said, or whether their local authority had called their town or village a nuclear-free zone. If the worst came to the worst, all that would be irrelevant. In those circumstances the survivors would turn out and help. As that is so, there is surely everything to be said for planning and training which would make that help not haphazard but effective. That is the purpose of civil defence and of the draft regulations, which I commend to the House.

Mr. Roy Hattersley: The most memorable sentence used by the Minister of State in commending the regulations to the House was the poignant assurance that the Government are not spoiling for a fight with local authorities over civil defence regulations. That raised in the minds of my hon. Friends and myself the thought that, as the Government are spoiling for a fight with local authorities over everything else, it is surprising that they have decided to exempt them in this particular.
I agree with the Minister on one issue to which he addressed himself at the beginning of his speech. It is entirely undesirable that the preparation of civil defence and the promulgation of civil defence regulations should be used as a vehicle for arguments about defence and disarmament. I know that the Government have claimed, and I knew that the Minister would claim, that much of the opposition to these regulations and to the regulations which preceded them, about which the Minister gave a less than concise and clear description, has been whipped up by the campaign for unilateral nuclear disarmament. I know that the Minister believes, and that the previous Secretary of State for the Home Department, Viscount Whitelaw, used to claim, that opponents of nuclear defence seized the opportunity of Operation Hardrock to demonstrate their influence and power, thereby setting in train a series and sequence of events which have led to the regulations.
As I have said on many occasions during the past three months, I am not a believer in what is called unilateral nuclear disarmament. I am not a supporter or member of CND. However, if civil defence has been politicised, it has not been because of the actions of those who take the unilateral nuclear disarmers' view. When the preceding regulations were promulgated two years ago, the Government regarded the civil defence debate as part of their campaign for Britain's defence, the Alliance of which Britain is a member, and their attack on some forms of local government autonomy and independence.
The Minister will recall that the Minister of State who was answerable to Viscount Whitelaw said, as recently as 7 August, that our civil defence policy is part of our defence strategy. If Ministers who are responsible for these matters are to argue in those terms, the Minister of

State must not be surprised when those who take a different view want to argue their case. They do not want to argue it in terms of compassion, protection, defending or looking after those who might be at the periphery of some unintentional nuclear horror; they want to address themselves to the general strategic considerations that the Minister and his colleagues have introduced into the debate. The right hon. Gentleman must not be surprised if the process started by the Government is emphasised and accepted by local authorities as a propaganda rather than a civil defence effort, especially when those local authorities judge that what the Government propose is by all standards unrealistic and unobtainable.

Mr. Jerry Hayes: How can the right hon. Gentleman say with any degree of sincerity that the Government are politicising the debate when Labour-controlled councils have declared themselves nuclear-free zones?

Mr. Hattersley: I remind the hon. Gentleman, who I am sure is an expert on these matters, of the preceding regulations. They required massive preparations to be made for evacuating major cities. They also required an arbitrary insertion into every local authority employee's contract—whatever their terms of service—of a legal obligation to carry out civil defence duties. Who would be surprised if the Greater London council, if the hon. Gentleman will excuse the expression, considered a proposal which required it to evacuate the population of London into the home counties and said, "Surely the Government cannot be stupid enough to believe that this is practical; they must be doing this for reasons of propaganda"?

Mr. Hurd: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House where such a proposal appeared?

Mr. Hattersley: It appeared in the original regulations. The Minister must know that perfectly well.
I congratulate the Minister on bringing about two changes which I very much welcome—the removal of any sort of evacuation and the removal of the coercion of local authority employees. It is not only the unilateral nuclear disarmers among local councillors who believe that the Government are engaged in an exercise of propaganda. The practical men and women who run county halls and town halls have said that the Government's proposals are not feasible. I shall allow the Minister to receive confirmation from his predecessor, the Solicitor-General, that my reference to the previous regulations is correct. When he has done so, I shall gladly give way to him again. If he does not wish to intervene now, I have no doubt that he will deal with the matter when he replies.
The Minister of State cannot be surprised if practical men and women in local government say that this cannot be a real proposal and that it is concerned with argument rather than with protection. The regulations that we are debating today, barely less than those that have been abandoned, lack the reality that would make them an instrument of compassion and humanitarian policy as distinct from the propaganda that I believe they are. When the new obligations are examined, it is difficult not to believe that the revision and the proposals were put forward by the Government as part of a general argument about defence. I shall deal with that point initially.
The Minister of State complains that those who reject the regulations insist on arguing about what he describes as the worst case, but his colleagues who advocated them have also argued in terms that Opposition Members, whether we believe in unilateral or multilateral disarmament, find unreasonable as well as terrifying. They are based on the concept of surviving and possibly even winning a nuclear war. My commitment to collective security within NATO is no less than that of the Minister of State, but it is based on the belief that our strategy is intended to prevent, not to win, a war. It is based on the belief that our strategy is intended to talk not about survival after the holocaust, but surviving the holocaust. It is difficult for us to support the theory of a deterrent unless we are confident that the deterrent deters, yet the basis of the regulations is on a different principle and a different plane.

Mr. Keith Best: Can the right hon. Gentleman not see that the concept of deterrence has two areas? The first is the threat of imposing unacceptable losses—the pugnacious nature of deterrence. The second is demonstrating that any attack by a potential aggressor would not inflict the damage that the aggressor thinks it might. Therefore, civil defence is as much a part of the concept of deterrence as any offensive posture might be.

Mr. Hattersley: I understand that theory, but that is not the most persuasive argument that I have heard about the possession of nuclear weapons. Their possession may result in 50 million or 60 million dead and 500 million or 600 million mortally wounded. The argument is that as long as the other side realise that the damage is containable, perhaps it will not attack. That is not the most persuasive argument that I have ever heard. I urge Lady Olga Maitland not to include it in her armoury in favour of NATO and collective security.
More important than that is the offence caused to practical men and women in local government who believe that they are required to become an arm of a Government publicity machine. Not only elected Labour councillors hold that view. I shall quote the opinion of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives. The Minister of State will confirm my opinion that the chief executives of local authorities are not notorious for their revolutionary tendencies. On this occasion, they were meeting under the chairmanship of the chief executive of the Isle of Wight. They came to this conclusion about the Government's civil defence regulations:
While the risk of war between nations continues to exist it is logical to maintain an appropriate degree of Civil Defence at home for the population.
We all agree with that. The chief executives continue:
We consider current levels of civil defence in this country and expenditure upon it to be inadequate, particularly in relation to defence expenditure as a whole. We complain of the approach which over-emphasises the deterrent aspects of Civil Defence and,in the local government context, fails to stress it as a humanitarian service provided by local authorities for the community.
The chief executives of the local authorities complained of the relationship that the Government are creating between civil defence and deterrence. The county councils, in which the Labour party is barely represented, said:
The Association is equally concerned over the damaging impact of new regulations upon public opinion which could be seen as misleading them on the work to be done when the reality of the achievement is so small.

This package is concerned with the Government's philosophy rather than the principle on which the regulations should be based.
I hope that the Minister of State will say more about the evacuation proposals. Is he saying that no mass movement of people out of our large cities was intended? Was not that one of the things that prejudiced the people and local authorities? Is he saying that while the shelters that were considered are being abandoned, which is another welcome change, we are required, if the regulations are passed, to provide structures that the local government associations and members of all parties represented in local government regard as an impractical absurdity? During his speech, perhaps provoked by an intervention, the Minister of State said that all that the councils were required to do, when the regulations were passed, was to convert existing buildings into emergency control centres of some sort. I understand that if the regulations are passed the Greater London council will be required to produce five, the county councils two each and the boroughs one each. In the contentious language that the debate has adopted, some of the local authorities described those centres as "bunkers". That may be an inappropriate description. The Minister of State described them as emergency centres. He should tell us a little about what they are in reality.
An emergency centre may be a room in a primary school, which those of us who are old enough can remember from 1945, at the end of the war. A bunker seems to be a more expensive operation. I am told that if the regulations are passed, the law will require the provision of centres at considerable cost. The Minister of State will tell me if I am wrong, but I am advised that the borough of Southport—progressive, I am sure, in every particular—has anticipated the regulations and produced something like that. It cost £200,000. Does he want that to happen in every borough, with five in the GLC area and two each for the county councils? What is the expected cost of those centres?
What is more, what is the purpose of those centres? If a centre is no more than a place where individuals congregate, what is the practical effect when atomic and nuclear weapons have exploded in the United Kingdom? What is the reality of the proposals? That is what we are talking about.
The British Medical Association gave a judgment of what might happen if a nuclear war convulsed the United Kingdom. It said that the National Health Service could not deal with the casualties that might be expected following the detonation of one megaton weapon over the United Kingdom. It follows that multiple nuclear explosions over several—possibly many—cities would force a breakdown in medical services.
What will be the operation of the centres? What is their real purpose? What is their practical value? How will they be constructed? What are they supposed to do? Unless practical answers are given to those questions, no one will believe that the Minister of State is proposing something for practical compassion. No one will believe it unless the Minister gives reassuring and rational answers about how the money is to be provided for all those services.
The regulations allow 100 per cent. grants for only a limited number of the new obligations, such as maintaining communications equipment, training and the expense of the volunteers. Following amendment of the original proposals, those centres are the nub of the new


regulations. I am not sure whether money will be available for them. They are the big change and the new item that has been inserted. They are the thing of substance. No one believes that the change has been brought about because the local authorities failed to keep their contingency plans up to date.
I am advised by lawyers—I am not a lawyer—that if the principal concern of the Government is that the local authorities that constructed civil defence plans 10 years ago are not revising them in the light of the new circumstances, then they could have been obliged by the existing regulations to revise them and bring them up to date.
How much will the centres cost and who will be responsible for each part of the costs incurred? We have been told that there is no money available for acquiring land or for building emergency centres. Is money available for the subsidiary costs involved in the training of volunteers? I say "subsidiary costs" because I understand perfectly well that if a person wishes to abandon his normal local authority duties to attend a civil defence training course, the costs of the course will be met by the Government. What happens back in the town or county hall? Who looks after the job of the person who has gone on the training course? The local authority associations asked the Minister's predecessor how such a cost was to be met, but they have received no reply.
Nor did they receive an answer to the practical question, which I emphasise again, of who contributes to the judgment of whether the Government were after something which helped the dead and the dying or whether they were concerned with making a political point.

Mr. Bill Walker: The right hon. Gentleman asked who would pay the costs occurring from people being away from work. Would he consider those who are territorials and volunteer reservists who leave their employment and undertake other duties? How are their employers recompensed?

Mr. Hattersley: There is no obligation on local authorities to provide a territorial battalion in each town hall. If each council were required to raise a yeomanry regiment and to give men and women time off to do whatever those regiments do, such a question would be proper and germane. Since that is not the case, the hon. Gentleman's question is irrelevant. Councils are required to give time off to volunteers to provide them with the training that they need. Somebody must meet that bill.
The Minister also said that the money spent by local authorities would not be reduced or taken off any grant they might receive from the Government. The Minister must give an unequivocal assurance that the spending of local authorities on civil defence matters, if these regulations come into operation, will not be used in the calculations which might at the end of the year designate an individual council as an overspender, and therefore penalise the council for spending more than the Government regard as appropriate.
The Secretary of State for the Environment is urging councils to spend less and threatening them with dire penalties if they do not. The position would be intolerable if the Home Office were placing new statutory obligations on councils without providing compensatory funds and

using the new money they require to spend as part of the calculation which might result in their eventual penalisation.
The Opposition will not be convinced of the practical necessity of the scheme unless the Government make radical revisions in what they have done and make radical alterations to the way in which they have advocated the civil defence programme.
I offer the Government a sensible course in relation to civil defence. I assure the Minister of State, with the same frankness as I told him that my views on nuclear defence were not those of the unilateralist movement, that I am not opposed to civil defence per se.

Mr. Robert Banks: Is that right?

Mr. Hattersley: The hon. Gentleman sounds astounded. It seems that some hon. Gentlemen are astounded very easily, although after the past 24 hours I am surprised that they have any astonishment left. Not only am I not opposed to civil defence as a means of preparation against civil emergencies; I am not opposed to it because we might be on the fringe of being involved in some form of hostility—war—which requires the assistance of small numbers to protect the civil population.
I am wholly opposed to a propaganda exercise that involves the promise and pretence that a nuclear war can be survived and won. In the light of that, I suggest that the sensible course is for the Minister to abandon these regulations and to start again. He should start by redefining the purposes of civil defence and produce a definition which includes both civil emergencies and the consequences of some form of warlike action, but the prospects for remedying those consequences must be practical. Most of us believe that an all-out nuclear war would not produce enough survivors to justify what the Minister said.
The Minister must put forward a practical proposition for what is realistic in terms of civil defence and how local authorities and others can discharge their functions. I say "local authorities and others", because this task may be wholly unsuited for local authorities to discharge. The responsibility is one for central Government. County councils and borough councils throughout the country do not regard this as an appropriate responsibility to be placed upon them. I am delighted that at least some Conservative Members are nodding assent.
When the Minister of State has explained what he means by practical civil defence, when he has determined what can be done and paid for, he should then decide how the task should properly be shared between local and central Government. If the Minister took my advice, the responsibility would fall on the shoulders of central Government. If the Minister produces something like the sensible recommendations that I have put forward, it may well be that the Opposition would support them. While he continues with an unconvincing propaganda exercise, the Opposition will vote against the regulations.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: The House has been treated to the third or fourth example of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) standing on his head when referring to the policies which he used to advocate when in office. If one looks back to some of the reasoning which led the party


which used to be called the Labour party to support NATO and the Alliance, it is clear that one did not merely stop at calling NATO an Alliance which might be a deterrent. If one recognised that that might not work, one was then in a position of having to pick up the pieces.
What, in effect, the right hon. Gentleman has said is that he is happy to pay an insurance premium on his home but if the fire strikes he will do nothing about it. I suggest that that is not the way in which the ordinary people of this country want civil defence treated. The right hon. Gentleman may not remember, as was shown from his remarks, that civil defence was very well run by local authorities under the name of ARP and in conjunction with local government committees during the last war. I see no reason why the situation should be taken over and run by central Government on this occasion.
There has certainly been politicisation from the Labour party. I will deal not only with CND, but with some of the "nuclear-free" authorities.
I will listen with the greatest respect to the BMA when it tells me what prescription I shall require to fight pneumonia or influenza or what level of consultant staffing is needed for a hospital. I will not listen to the BMA when it tries to predicate the number of bombs which are likely to fall on this country. The BMA report came to the following conclusion:
We remain strongly of the view that the medical profession has a responsibility to involve itself in contingency planning to meet a wide variety of major disasters. Some elements of this experience might then benefit some survivors in some areas following a nuclear attack.
I suggest that that line should be followed by local authorities. I will deal with that matter later.
I start from the premise that the regulations are needed and I say gently to my right hon. Friend the Minister of State that they are somewhat overdue. I hope that he will not mind my saying that he is listening too much to his civil servants if he really believes that allowing consultation to go on for a long time will influence the GLC or the Lambeths, Camdens, and Sheffields of this world. They are laughing behind his back. I suggest that there should be a short, sharp burst of consultation, so that we can get the regulations off the ground. Some of us have seen how easy it can be to spin out Government decisions and I urge my right hon. Friend not to let that happen in this case.
The regulations are practical and sensible and I do not believe that any normal person could call them political regulations. Any preparation that may save lives or alleviate suffering deserves the support of intelligent people.
All hon. Members have been bombarded—I use that word deliberately—by a mass of political propaganda, much of it produced at ratepayers' expense. It is wholly political and it might have been better if it had come directly from Labour party headquarters.
That is one reason why rate-capping is necessary to curb the excesses of local authorities. I say to my friends in local government on the Association of County Councils and the Association of District Councils that they should realise that ratepayers outside Sussex and the Test valley demand that local authority bodies support the rate-capping proposals that are to be put before the House.
The Association of Nuclear-Free Local Authorities asks us not to pass the regulations. The concept of nuclear-free zones is a load of nonsense. Does anyone really imagine

that they will make an iota of difference? Visualise the scene in the Kremlin. A meeting of the central committee is called, Marshal Ustinov and Marshal Ogarkov say, "Comrade Andropov, we fear we shall have to use a nuclear weapon." Comrade Andropov replies, "If that is your decision, so be it. But do remember, you must not drop it on London because nice Mr. Livingstone has called that a nuclear-free city." Of course, Barnet or Westminster, which have been more sensible and practical, might have been potential targets, but they are within the nuclear-free zone.
Authorities that declare themselves nuclear-free zones are deliberately fooling the public and wasting their money. It is noticeable that when the public had an opportunity to take action, they showed by their votes in the election what they thought of the nonsense of nuclear-free zones. We should ignore those authorities. They are playing politics at the expense of their citizens.

Mr. Barry Porter: I am addressing my mind to this attack on local authorities which, for one reason or another, are apparently not fit to determine their own transport expenditure or other spending. We are contemplating the remote possibility of something more horrific than spending too much on transport or other matters and it seems that we Conservative Members ought to consider whether local authorities are the appropriate bodies to have such responsibility. It seems to me that the Army, central Government or another overall national body should have that major responsibility.

Mr. Finsberg: My hon. Friend points out the dilemma which has faced the Government since they came into power. The problem is that local government has changed out of all recognition in the past few years. It used to be accepted by local authorities that they had specific functions to perform—refuse collection, the letting of houses, employing public health inspectors, and so on. They did not try to set themselves up as experts on nuclear weapons. If local authorities do not intend to follow the constitutional lines that they used to follow and powers are consequently taken from them, they will have brought that on themselves.

Mr. Bill Walker: It is important that my hon. Friend should be told that, before the 1939 war, some local authorities in this country refused to build Anderson shelters. If I am called to speak in the debate I shall draw attention to that fact, because the effect of their decisions was horrendous.

Mr. Finsberg: I hope to listen to my hon. Friend with rapt attention.
I believe that most of my hon. Friends and most members of the public attach as much credence to nuclear-free zones as we do to organisations such as Babies against the Bomb. The nonsense that such organisations are putting forward is diverting the public from the importance of civil defence. It is not diverting the volunteer workers, but there is a danger that such bodies will begin to believe their own propaganda.
A mass of legal arguments have been presented by lawyers commissioned by, among others, the GLC. I shall leave my legal friends to deal with such nit-picking, but I wish to deal with one part of the document that we all received from the GLC.
I wonder how the council's lobby of the House will go tomorrow, since we will not be debating civil defence then. The document said under the heading "Compulsory War Games":
The requirement that the Greater London Council has to `participate in any training exercise' is not as happily phrased as it could be. The GLC, being an incorporated entity, is unable to take part itself in any training exercise.
Next comes the example of politicking:
The GLC objects strongly to becoming, under duress, an outpost of NATO.
The GLC is entitled to rely on counsel's opinion and say that it does not believe that it should take part in training exercises, but by saying that it objects to becoming an outpost of NATO it is clearly making a political argument. I say in passing that most of us think that the GLC is more likely to become an outpost of the Warsaw pact than of NATO.
All of us are against war, with or without the bomb. However, one factor that is frequently overlooked is the possibility or probability —I use both words, because without access to the Warsaw pact's war plans we cannot be sure — of bombs falling in various parts of the country. It is easy to talk about 200 megatons and to base all one's arguments on that assumption. However, the people who do so forget that the bombs may all be dropped on one spot. It is assumed that they will be neatly dotted all around the country. But even then, there will be survivors who will need help. Help from trained people will be better than help from others. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State said that when trouble came everyone would flock forward, but it is obvious that the most valuable help will come from those who are trained.
We know what value to place on the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook's comment that if the Government made some changes he might vote differently or advise his colleagues to vote differently. We know that the Labour party's attitude is to assume the worst and to plan on that basis. Therefore, it says that the Government's proposals are nonsense.
The regulations will help local authorities and the general public to cope with civil disaster, conventional and nuclear war. It is not foolish to plan on the basis of possible escalation because that is one scenario which we cannot afford to ignore.
There is no question of conscientious objection. I respect genuine pacifists such as Quakers and those with ideals, but in the last war they were prepared to carry stretchers and do other civil defence work, such as air raid precautions, because they did not believe that it would contribute to war but would protect the sufferers. Conscience does not enter into this at all. I have read of some community physicians saying that they will not undertake the task of civil defence planning. They are employees of health authorities and if they will not do the job for which they are paid they should resign and not continue to draw money under false pretences. Matters of conscience do not arise in such cases.
I said that the Government ought not to allow too long to elapse before consultation takes place. A timetable which allows five weeks at each stage for consultation is more than sufficient for local authorities and their associations. Not all local authority associations have come out against the regulations. The Association of County Councils has taken a responsible attitude. It said:

We support the general intentions underlying the new civil defence regulations but in welcoming them as evidence of the Government's determination we are bound to point out that we do so with reservations which are outlined in this document.
That is precisely what the Government expect of local authority associations. They have always accepted the principles that Governments have set out because Governments derive their authority from Parliament. Local authorities have specific tasks and their responsibility is to fit those tasks into the jobs that Government and Parliament have given them. I live in hope, but not much expectation, that local authorities which are presently being obstructive and which, in the event of catastrophe, will have condemned their fellow citizens to unnecessary suffering may change their minds.

Mr. Reg Freeson: I listened with great interest to the non-political approach of the Minister and of the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Mr. Finsberg). I make no complaint about that. In fact, I shall follow suit. I have no objection to—indeed, I welcome —the sponsorship of a more effective organisation for dealing with civil disasters and for community service of a physical nature throughout Britain.
I have no objection, in principle or practice, to genuine efforts at civil defence. However, the regulations before us are not concerned with creating services in the wake of civil disasters, with community service, with physical jobs that are required in our community or with civil defence. The debates of the past two years since the regulations were first promulgated have not been about genuine civil defence, and I take that as my starting point.
As we have seen tonight, and on many occasions, the Government are attempting to persuade us that we could and should deal with the aftermath of a hostile nuclear attack. That has been at the centre of the argument and the debate, both in the House and outside, by Ministers and others over the past two years or more.
The Government's case that we could mount an effective response is fundamentally unsound. There is not one professional expert organisation of which I know outside the Home Office which believes the Government's case. That is not to say that any of them objects to civil defence as such, either in principle or practice.
Just one bomb of the power used at Hiroshima—"a small bomb" to quote the Minister's phrase—which we used to our everlasting shame in the last world war would, if dropped over a major city in Britain, produce so many people needing hospital treatment as to overwhelm medical services in the locality. Multiply that beyond the Hiroshima experience, and the imagination boggles. Yet the world now contains nuclear weapons with the power of 1 million Hiroshima bombs, capable of killing 100,000 million humans—and we are nowhere near such a world population yet—as well as destroying countless other forms of life. They are the so-called tactical nuclear bombs, referred to sickeningly by the Prime Minister and others as theatre nuclear weapons. Each so-called tactical bomb can kill 100,000 people or more—more than the population of my constituency.
Civil defence has two main alternative bases of action, either evacuation, and all that goes with it, or protection at home, and they are both mutually contradictory. They cannot operate as one policy, but are alternative approaches. The evacuation of the populations of our


massive conurbations, in a country the size of the United Kingdom, seems hardly possible. The Government themselves have now dropped that proposition. In any case, no place would be safe from the effects of nuclear attack. I understand that the scientific research and development branch of the Home Office recently made a feasibility study of evacuation. One wonders why the study has not been published. We are entitled to call upon the Government to publish it. When he was Home Secretary, Viscount Whitelaw said:
The public has a right to knowledge of these matters."—[Official Report, 7 August 1980, Vol. 990, c. 793.]
He was referring to civil defence, and we would all agree with him. Why has that study been kept secret?
It is now well established that the advice in the Government pamphlet "Protect and Survive" is nonsense. The pamphlet has not been referred to tonight, but it is still in many people's minds. Indeed, it is still available. Do the Government really believe that my two young children, for instance, will survive if they hide under a table? Do they really think that we ought to explode nuclear bombs over Moscow if the Russian army came to Calais, giving me five minutes to whitewash my windows while my children hid under the table?
That is an amusing picture, but it is the meaning of the Government's official advice, and so we have to ask these rhetorical questions. Official publications—not some silly comic strip—are advising the general public that their children will survive if they hide under the table. Would my children be helped if, during the five minutes between the time when the decision was taken and the bomb arrived, I put a supply of food and some toothbrushes under the table with them? That is another official suggestion.
Whether or not we agree with the local authorities and the GLC over the policy of nuclear-free zones, let us be non-party for a moment. Who is trying to fool whom—those who use the device of the nuclear-free zone to try to awaken public awareness, or those who, on behalf of the Government, put out documents such as that?
Whether or not they intend it to be so, the Government's advice is callous. The Government are advising people to stay at home simply because they have no plans to provide adequate civil defence. They have no plans for adequate shelters or supplies for the millions of people in this country. It has been estimated that simply to protect all our people against blast would cost about £180 billion. The Government are telling us to fend for ourselves, because they are not prepared to follow the logic of their own case and make resources and organisation available, whether through local or central Government agencies. The effect, if not the intention, of their policy is callous. They are trying to fool people into thinking that they intend to provide genuine civil defence.

Dr. Glyn: I am following the right hon. Gentleman's argument with care. One of the objections that he seems to be making—rightly, in my view—is that there is no central organisation to shift resources, for instance, from one area to another. There seems to be no overall control such as there would, or should, be in a military campaign.

Mr. Freeson: That may or may not be the case, but that is not the point that I was making. Whether civil defence is organised through local or through central Government agencies, if the Government are not prepared to devote massive resources to such a policy, they can have no

intention of providing genuine civil defence. The resources required would be enormous, and the Government are not prepared to make them available.
The Government are advising us to rely on ourselves. Let us set aside the phoney nonsense of the regulations, the organisation and the planning. I find the constant use of the word "planning" somewhat sickening. Planning for what? All this talk about planning does not alter the fact that the Government mean that we must fend for ourselves. They are not prepared to put the resources where, on their own logic, they are required. If we had to fend for ourselves, what would happen to the disabled, the elderly, the children and those living in high rise blocks of flats? What about the poor and deprived who cannot buy the nuclear fallout shelters now being pushed on the market so profitably in certain quarters of our country?
If the Government were sincere in wishing to protect our people, they would not be spending only a potential £15 million a year on local authority civil defence services or on so-called civil defence planning, while spending £8,000 million on Trident, which increases the likelihood of nuclear war. For years, Government circulars and advice started from the premise that nuclear attack should concern us, but recently the emphasis seems to have shifted, as we heard again this evening. It has shifted towards the need for civil defence to defend us against conventional attack. Is that shift in emphasis an attempt to deflect public awareness and concern away front the issues of nuclear war that are now giving rise to so much concern throughout Britain and elsewhere?
The planning needs for dealing with conventional and nuclear attacks are, of course, quite different. Indeed, they are opposed in certain important respects. For example, there is a need to concentrate resources when dealing with conventional warfare, but to disperse them when dealing with nuclear warfare. Protection at home or evacuation have already been mentioned. What are the Government advising the public to do?
In reply to criticisms the Government often refer to the potential effectiveness of comprehensive civil defence preparations in certain other countries. Sweden and Switzerland are often cited. However, that overlooks the fact that neither of those countries is a nuclear power or a member of a nuclear alliance, and that they spend different proportions of their resources in different ways on military and civil defence.
However limited a nuclear war may be, it is impossible to argue that there can be any effective defence. In addition to the effects of blast and burns, there is radiation. At Hiroshima, everybody within 1,000 yards of the centre of the explosion died. Those who escaped suffered, and died later from burns, injuries and then radiation. It has been estimated that, in addition to the 100,000 people killed outright, another 100,000 died not long afterwards.

Mr. Banks: Surely the right hon. Gentleman is making the case for civil defence. Those people on the perimeter who survived but suffered from the effects of the explosion would have been spared them had there been civil defence arrangements. If the right hon. Gentleman visited Hiroshima today he would find a modern thriving city on that site.

Mr. Freeson: I think that the hon. Gentleman has misunderstood me. We have only two examples, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of the explosion of an atomic or


nuclear bomb. To say the least, it does not follow that that is what we would experience in any future war. Expert medical opinion does not hold that we can plan to survive such a nuclear war. I do not need to quote medical opinion, because we have all had an opportunity to read the opinions and reports published on behalf of the medical profession.
There are no defences against the lethal effects of nuclear weapons or treatment for those who might initially survive such explosions. The Government are deceiving the people into believing that they might survive. The Government may not intend to do that, but they are doing so with a little whitewash here and there in our so-called "intellectually honest exchanges" — I quote the phrase that was used by the Minister at the start of the debate.
Evacuation being out of the question, the essential issue, which has implications beyond civil defence, is control. We can organise civil defence by controlling what happens in our area, not by protecting people from the effects of nuclear war. This is causing much concern. We should not spend our resources on phoney activities. It would be far better if we used them to remove the conditions that can give rise to the conflict — power-mongering and war. That is one reason why it is important to switch resources on a massive scale to world development particularly in the areas where we find the forces that might bring the world to the type of war that we all fear.
We are caught up in what can only be described as obscene madness. At its mildest, it is the reductio ad absurdum of war which has little to do with defence, but a great deal to do with social, military and economic power complexes of enormous drive, power and influence, involving millions of people in those countries which have gone nuclear. We are becoming incapable of standing back and rationally assessing and changing the giant processes in which we are caught up. We must do so, and we do not need to wait for someone else to act. Our priority must be to move towards non-nuclear defence policies.
The Government's myth-making on civil defence reinforces the urgent need to move towards such non-nuclear defence policies. There are risks in any defence policy. Security cannot be guaranteed, but so-called defence, based on nuclear weapons, must mean catastrophe if ever it is tested. We risk total destruction by the so-called nuclear defence, which cannot by its nature provide civil defence. It is about time that the House came to that conclusion and acted accordingly.

Mr. Robert Banks: One of the most remarkable things about this debate is that the level of attendance is one of the best that we have had during a civil defence debate.
The Government deserve great credit for having transformed what was a bleak and hollow picture when they came into office in 1979. Civil defence has been lifted from obscurity and placed in the correct position. I welcome these regulations, although I regret that it has been necessary to bring them in.
There was some discussion about whether we should refer to civil defence as such or as home defence. There was a feeling that by calling it civil defence we were harping back to the last world war when civil defence

played a vital part. I think it is right that we have returned to the term "civil defence" as it is one that everyone understands. If people appreciated its value during the last world war they will understand how important it is in the nuclear age.
I regret that civil defence has become a target for criticism by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. To declare a nuclear-free zone is one thing; to declare that we have no civil defence is another. The next thing that it will be doing is declaring an epidemic-free zone. That means absolutely nothing. It is its usefulness as protection against conventional attack that so many people seem to denigrate and which I think is an error. Any war that developed—heaven forbid that it ever should—might start with a conventional attack, and that is where we need civil defence to protect people.
If it grew to a nuclear war, who is to know what sort of nuclear war it would be? Critics, of course, like to assume that it would be an all-out nuclear attack which would destroy everything and everyone. I do not believe that that is possible, likely or feasible. I believe that many people on the perimeter of any nuclear explosion would desperately need protection, and it is our duty to provide them with that protection to minimise loss of life.

Mr. Stuart Holland: The hon. Gentleman has claimed that a conventional attack might precede a nuclear one. Has he any opinion about the time that might be involved? If he is recommending that in a conventional attack we should employ civil defence forces — ambulances, fire brigades and so on—they would be caught on the ground during a nuclear attack. Rather than aiding defence, it would weaken civil defence.

Mr. Banks: The parity of forces between NATO and the Warsaw pact is our best insurance against a nuclear war. In the last war there was no chemical attack from either side, because Germany and Great Britain had sufficient stocks of chemical weapons so that it was known that if one side used them, the other would. They were never used. That is my belief. There is no question of trying to decide the time scale that one would adopt.

Mr. Stuart Holland: In that case, the hon. Gentleman is changing the ground of his argument. He is saying that deterrence will work. If he is so confident of that, why does he interest himself in civil defence? He cannot have it both ways. It is an example of the double thinking that we have from the Conservative Benches in the debate on this issue.

Mr. Banks: I base my arguments strongly on the need to protect people from conventional attack, but as a double insurance it is better to escalate that protection to include nuclear attack.
We need long-term planning. Those who criticise "Protect and Survive" as a leaflet are justified in their criticisms because it was designed originally to be used during a period of extreme tension and crisis and gave advice to householders on what measures they could take with the material that they had to hand.
We are now talking about long-term planning. I hope that the Government will produce more leaflets and advice so that the population can be given advice as to what reasonable precautions can be taken in the buildings in which they live, and where underground structures exist they can be adapted to provide sensible accommodation.
There is one important aspect of these regulations— the harnessing of voluntary help. I have always believed that there is a huge reservoir of people who are willing, qualified and able to give voluntary help. We have no better example than the Royal Observer Corps which for many years, against a great deal of opposition to civil defence measures, has maintained its numbers and done a remarkably good job. [Interruption.] Its members give their time for virtually no pay. They attend exercises and are always on call. I do not think anyone should ever criticise the national assistance that they will always give if called upon to do so.
In north Yorkshire we have the home defence community adviser programme. I think that there is a problem in determining the role of the volunteers. Are they to give advice to communities and parish councils alone or do something more? We need to declare clearly what the role of the volunteer is to be. I should like to see it expanded into taking positive steps in the organisation of civil defence, and in particular to play a major role, if not the major role, in the survey of buildings to determine where underground structures exist — for instance, cellars in pubs and underground car parks.
Volunteers should also play a part in co-ordinating voluntary bodies and involving people in industry, who have employees and have the plant that could be of value in an emergency. They should also bring in the police, the fire brigade, doctors and so on in a voluntary capacity to work out how best certain areas can deal with the obligations to be put upon them. It will be important to give this new body an identity. Some people may smirk about the old civil defence corps but there is no doubt that it did a marvellous job and saved many lives. We should come down to the idea of giving a badge of authority to those who are playing a part in civil defence.
More especially, the regulations require that we have a civil defence comissioner, who, with an inspectorate, will have the responsibility of giving information direct to the Minister as to the state of civil defence among the various local authorities. These inspectors could go round the country to the various authorities, not to oversee but to look through the range of activities that are taking place and advise and apprise the Minister of the arrangements that are in hand.
The argument in all this centres on survival. I do not share the view that there is no case for anybody surviving, even in an all-out nuclear war. It is possible for people to survive where they are in certain areas, but more especially when they have the insurance of knowing that there are means by which they can get protection and take protection themselves if necessary. Therefore, I heartily commend the regulations, the Government's attitude towards civil defence and what they are doing to get something moving on it.

Mr. Eric Deakins: Unlike the hon. Member for Harrogate (Mr. Banks) who represents a rural area, I represent —

Mr. Robert Banks: Harrogate is hardly a rural area.

Mr. Deakins: I apologise. The hon. Gentleman represents a small town in a rural area. I have a rather different perspective, that of those who live in the largest metropolis, and, if my remarks are geared rather towards

those who live in large urban areas such as London, I hope that the hon. Member for Harrogate and others who have a different perspective on this matter will forgive me.
The Government are keen that we should, as in these regulations, take appropriate civil defence precautions everywhere. We in London recognise that, whatever else may happen, London is the nation's capital and the administrative centre. It will be the main target and, therefore, issues of defence and civil defence are matters for all Londoners and all London local authorities. We shall be involved whether we like it or not.
Local government in London, both the GLC and the 32 London boroughs, is being required to act by these regulations, but there is a lack of Government information. The Minister made some attempt to meet these points, but he did not do so sufficiently well to allow the Government to get away with the lack of information at the moment. For example, what is to be the likely warning period? What is to be the likely scale of attack or of destruction? What are likely to be the problems in the aftermath of a nuclear attack? All these problems will have to he faced in London.
The Minister's predecessor said in a parliamentary answer:
We advise those working in the field of civil defence to plan for a range of possible attacks, including conventional bombing, a nuclear attack confined to military targets, and a full-scale nuclear attack aimed at destroying both military installations and major cities." — [Official Report, 4 May 1983; Vol. 42, c. 67.]
Any local authority faced with that advice has no real alternative other than to plan for all three. Any planning for all three must mean planning for the largest attack, and that would encompass plans for a conventional attack, That raises problems for local authorities, especially those in urban areas such as London.
The Government have not made clear their policy on what the population should do in the event of a full-scale nuclear attack. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) said that at one stage the Government were advocating an evacuation policy. However, the Minister of State did not refer to that in his speech. I hope that the Minister who will reply to the debate will comment. Are the Government now advising people and local authorities — which must do the planning for civil defence during the next few years—to stay put? Is that the advice this evening from the Government to the people, especially those in London?
There is a conflict of advice available to local authorities about the scale of likely destruction. The Government claim that millions will survive, but many of us are sceptical about that. Local authorities planning for a nuclear attack must ask how long the survivors can be expected to survive and what conditions they will face. In what condition will the survivors be? Will there not be epidemics, starvation and, for a considerable period, contamination of water and food supplies? What is to happen to medical services? Without some guidance on those issues, it is a footling exercise to expect local authorities to plan properly for the aftermath of a full-scale nuclear attack.
The British Medical Association has given advice that the Minister and some of his colleagues have tended to dismiss. However, it is clear from the BMA report that in the event of a full-scale nuclear attack there will be an


almost complete collapse of medical services, especially in major urban areas such as London. That must be taken into account by local authorities when planning for civil defence.
We have the result of an exercise undertaken in 1980, code named Square Leg. It was based on five one-megaton bombs being dropped around the periphery of London. That showed that 5 million people in London would die within the first two months after the initial explosion from blast and radiation. In addition, there would be deaths from burns. The medical services could not cope with all the burns. There would also be death from disease. If local authorities were to take advice from the 1980 exercise, I wonder how many of the 7 million Londoners would survive. It would not be millions. It might be hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands, but it would not be many.
It is clear from the debate that no Government action is contemplated in the regulations to protect the people of London and other major areas against attack. The concern shown during the lead up to the regulations by such organisations as the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives is that the Government are concerned solely with the survival of bureaucrats who will be invested with total power—ruling rather like demented Hitlers from their bunkers over a nuclear wasteland. If the Government do not provide shelters for the public, and if there is a major nuclear attack, the only people likely to survive unscathed for a time are those with their own official, classified protected bunkers, no doubt built at great public expense. I do not envy them because there will be little for them to rule over after such an attack.
Another issue of interest to Londoners, especially in my constituency in the borough of Waltham Forest, is local authority staff. The Minister, in his opening remarks, said that the Government had made a change in policy and that there would be no need for any conscience clause because there would be no obligation on individual members of staff. It would be left to local authorities to pick and choose. I wonder about that, because paragraph 4(1)(d) in the regulation dealing with general local authority functions says that one of the functions of the Greater London council and the London boroughs is
to arrange for the attendance at any training course…of any member of their staff…who is within a category of persons of any description specified by that Minister as being persons for whom that course or other form of training is provided".
It seems to me that the Government are taking the power to say to local authorities, including the GLC and the London boroughs, "There is a certain category of people in your employment, and people in that category must attend training courses." I regard that as compulsion and in my opinion that warrants having a conscience clause. Of course, there is no conscience clause because most people in local government and elsewhere are fairly sensible and have no confidence in the deceitful civil defence charade that is being paraded before us tonight. In my view, this is a new attack on civil liberties.
Then there is the matter of the abolition of the GLC which the Minister, to do him justice, mentioned in his opening remarks. He said that we have to plan for local authorities as they are now. If the GLC is abolished—if the Government get their way, which I hope they will not — those functions will be handed to the 32 greater London boroughs. I ask the House to consider this: if the

civil defence work of the GLC is to be bequeathed, in the Minister's words, to the London boroughs, surely that is a recipe for confusion. Furthermore, are the Government really saying that smaller civil defence units are preferable to larger units, because that will be the effect of the abolition of the GLC and handing over its civil defence functions to the London boroughs? The abolition of the GLC will weaken the civil defence effort in London, because there will no longer be a co-ordinating authority. Of course, that is not an argument for resisting the abolition of the GLC. Many powerful arguments are being advanced elsewhere, but, on the Minister's own terms tonight, he is undermining his case.
There is another important issue in London and other large centres at present, and that involves hospital closures and staff cuts in the National Health Service. That will lead to a concentration of hospital services in fewer hospitals in the greater London area. That, in turn, will mean greater vulnerability of those hospital services to a full-scale nuclear attack, even a partial nuclear attack. I wonder whether the Home Office talks to the DHSS about these matters. Certainly the lack of liaison between the two Departments—one going one way, and one advising local authorities to go the other way—suggests that the Government are not really concerned about what will happen to the health of the people of London in the aftermath of a nuclear attack.
There is another issue of great concern to Londoners. No money is being made available in these civil defence regulations for civil defence in industry or public utilities providing power. It means that local authorities, if they survive the initial nuclear attack, will not be able to count on having adequate medical and power supplies at their disposal to carry out their functions. How could any surviving hospital, let alone local authority, function without adequate medical supplies and power? Again, has there been any planning in this respect? I think that the answer is no, because the Minister did not mention that aspect in his opening remarks. Again, I wonder whether the DHSS has been asked to give an opinion about what might be needed in the aftermath of a nuclear attack.
Civil defence preparations and these regulations are trying to get the British people to think the unthinkable. If deterrence works—as long as that is the policy of this country, we must all hope that it does work—there is no necessity for civil defence, because deterrence will prevent a war and therefore we shall not need civil defence. The emphasis now — the new emphasis, I stress, since 1971 on civil defence in these regulations means that the Government appear to be losing confidence in their own deterrence policy. I wonder whether the Ministry of Defence is aware of that. The Government may laugh at this, but I believe that it is a matter of pure logic: if one believes in deterrence, one does not need a civil defence policy and one certainly does not need regulations of the kind that have been put before the House tonight. I ask the Minister and the House: is it a coincidence that the regulations that we are debating tonight come to the House within a few weeks of cruisemissiles being installed in this country? Perhaps the Government believe that those missiles will increase the threat of nuclear war and that we should, therefore, start to take the failure of our defence policy more seriously.
From the debate this evening it seems that civil defence is merely a public relations exercise by the Government. Ministers do not believe in its effectiveness because no


other Department, except perhaps the Defence Ministry, is planning for the aftermath of a nuclear attack. We have heard examples of other Departments going their own way to make the civil defence task after a nuclear attack more difficult instead of easier. If the Ministries do not believe in the efficacy of civil defence, why should London Members, London local authorities or the British public believe in it? That is why I hope that we shall throw out the regulations.

Mr. Michael Latham: Labour supporters have three basic attitudes to the issue. Some, like the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Deakins), do not believe in civil defence at all and prefer to declare nuclear-free zones. Some, like the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), say that they believe in civil defence but are not prepared to give examples of what type of civil defence they believe in. The third type, from whom we shall not hear tonight, personify the millions of Labour party supporters throughout the country who not only support civil defence but are involved in it, as members of the British Legion, for example. We all know that they are there, and we see them each day.

Mr. Stuart Holland: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Latham: I have only just begun my speech, so the hon. Gentleman can wait. He has already intervened in other speeches.
Some of us on the Government Benches think that the regulations do not go far enough. Local authority chief executives, in a report which includes the signature of the chief executive of Leicestershire, roundly declare that the law is being broken by local authorities and that the Government are also falling down on their job. Although the regulations will go some way to improving the present unsatisfactory state of civil defence planning, they ignore the key weakness at the heart of the present system. It is that no one is centrally co-ordinating the activities of the 70 autonomous local authorities and civil defence units in the United Kingdom, or even monitoring them effectively.
Each of the 70 authorities has its own emergency planning team which is left to its own devices to write its own plans. There is no check by the Home Office to ensure that the plans are adequate. No monitoring of progress takes place. There is no standardisation or attempt to ensure that the proposed plans are practical. Some local authorities have made big efforts; some have done little or nothing. I see little in the new regulations to convince me that the situation is likely to change much.
There is a case for effective civil defence, there is a case —although I do not agree with it—for no civil defence, but there is no case at all for ineffective or chaotic civil defence, with no central scrutiny and no real Home Office commitment to practical action.
We need three further steps now. First, we need a proper civil defence inspectorate in the Home Office. At regional level, and based upon the home defence regional government offices, we should have a regional emergency planning co-ordinator as part of the civil administration of government, whose job it is to assist local authorities in the formulation of their individual plans. That job is not being done by department F6 at the Home Office.
My right hon. Friend, in an answer to me on 19 July, denied that the Home Office had received any representations from county emergency planning officers asking for such regional structure, but the vice-president of the Society of Emergency Planning Officers wrote to Mr. Howard of F6 on 27 July showing that that was not a fair or accurate reply. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State has since written a courteous letter to me to explain.
Secondly, it is time that local emergency planning staff were selected, appointed and paid for 100 per cent. by the Home Office and seconded to local government. In that regard, I support the throwaway line by the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook towards the end of his speech. It is scandalous that local authority employees, 75 per cent. of whose salaries are paid for by the taxpayer, are effectively prevented from carrying out their legal duties by the political activities of their local authorities.
Thirdly, a realistic deadline must be set for local authorities to carry out their duties. The new regulations will impose a considerable extra workload on councils. The Home Office will need to ensure that the duties are carried out with energy and speed. Local authorities must be told what practical steps they are supposed to take. The advice will need to be regularly updated. At present, some of the emergency planning circulars are 10 years old. There must also be a requirement on other important bodies such as the police, the Health Service, the fire service and the nationalised industries to prepare civil defence plans. Is this being done at present? If so, who is monitoring it and how?
The truth of the matter is that this whole business has been neglected for decades and only now is it being taken seriously. No one expects war and I believe that deterrence will prevent it, but the time has come for the Government to say loud and clear that the present position is unsatisfactory. It is an insult to those who are trying to work it seriously and a new attitude of determination and central direction is needed if civil defence is to be taken seriously by the people.

9 pm

Mr. Robert Maclennan: It is a great pleasure to follow immediately what was without question the most constructive speech that has been made in the debate. The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Latham) put forward serious propositions that the Government should not only think about but respond to at the conclusion of the debate.
I had some sympathy with the Minister of State in opening the debate when he expressed the hope that civil defence might be treated in a non-partisan way in future, but I do not suppose that he had any genuine expectation of his hopes being realised either in the House tonight or in those politicised local authorities which are using this issue to pursue arguments about national nuclear defence policy. Certainly the response from the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) was as partisan as one would have expected it to be. It was notable that he did not at any point in the first 19 minutes of his speech say whether he supports the concept of civil defence. The right hon. Gentleman threw away in three suggestions at the end of his speech the idea that, if other regulations were brought forward, he might be prepared to consider them. For the deputy leader of the Labour party to give no more view as to what type of civil defence


would be acceptable to Her Majesty's Official Opposition appeared to me to be falling rather short of the obligations of his new position.
The Minister of State's hope of obtaining a new climate in which civil defence could be discussed rationally was never likely to be achieved in the light of the history of the past two years of this debate. Not only has there been a background of local authorities declaring nuclear-free zones and using that as an argument against civil defence, but there has been apparent the most incompetent handling of this issue by the Home Office and the most appalling lack of communication between local authorities, which are supposed to be participating in civil defence, and central Government.
This was brought out dispassionately and forcefully by the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives in its trenchant criticism of the Home Office for its lack of appreciation of the financial difficulties of local government and its lack of guidance on the duties expected of local authorities. So vast has been the gap of communication between local authorities and central Government that it appears that the Home Office was taken by surprise when operation Hard Rock could not be mounted.
If the Home Office had been in possession of the understanding which informed the Solace report of the degree of unpreparedness of local authorities and the virtual total nonconformity with the obligations imposed under the 1948 Act and the dependent subsequent regulations, operation Hard Rock would never have been called for. It is clear that the Home Office was ignorant of the fact that local authorities were not even beginning to comply with the limited obligations imposed on them by the 1974 regulations.
Where should we go from here? I do not see how anyone can seriously argue that there is no case for civil defence. The arguments advanced by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Deakins) are flawed in that he makes the assumption, as have others on the Opposition Benches, that the catastrophe of nuclear war renders all civil aid to the community worthless.
No one would deny — the Minister did not, and I would not—that the catastrophe of nuclear war on the minimum scale imaginable would not wreak the kind of unimaginable horrors of which we in this country have no direct experience. But that does not discharge any Government from the responsibility to do whatever may be done by forward thinking and planning to minimise by however small an amount the harm which such a war would cause.
The regulations which we are debating are defective in that they do not carry forward the appreciation of the sort of plans that can realistically be made by the authorities which are to be responsible for civil defence and which would have a beneficial effect in the range of circumstances which they are intended to meet.
There is no doubt that the Government have been too hasty in promulgating the regulations — without doing the necessary homework and without the necessary communication with local authorities about what their job would be—because it is not good enough simply to impose new responsibilities on local authorities without a strong co-ordinating hand from central Government.
It is arguable that in the sphere of civil defence the main responsibility should be a central Government one, with local authorities simply acting as agents in interpreting and giving effect on the ground to the duties imposed on them by central Government, who are able to make the kind of appraisals about the consequences of various types of outbreak of hostility which local government cannot make.
Following that line of reasoning, it must be the case that local authorities should not be expected to finance the function of civil defence. It should be 100 per cent. grant-aided by central Government, and that is another defect of these regulations. The expenditure on salaries and the associated costs of the planning staff and headquarters will continue to be grant-aided at only 75 per cent. That is bound to lead at a time of financial stringency for local authorities to the greatest scepticism about their role and some reluctance to meet their obligations under the regulations. The Government say that only a small amount of money is involved. I accept that it is, and that seems to be all the more reason for the Government to make the money available by means of general taxation.
The Minister has said that there will be an explanatory circular of guidance issued after the regulations have been passed by the House. This is a somewhat odd procedure to adopt. It would have been better if the Government had preceded the regulations with a full explanation of how they would be implemented and the basic assumptions which were being made by the Government about what should be done by local authorities in providing civil defence. There has been far too little communication between the Government and local authorities on this issue. I do not argue that a vast consultative process is needed. I am not arguing for unnecessary delay, but I am asking for a great deal more clarity from the Government on what they want to be done.
I agree with the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook about the opacity of the provisions on the centres that have to be provided by the local authorities under the regulations. It is far from clear whether they are to be bunkers or, as the right hon. Gentleman put it, primary schools, which some of us remember from 1945. We have not been enlightened about that even in the course of the debate.
The Minister has talked about the utilisation of existing resources. That will not narrow the choice in the minds of local authorities and it does not reveal what the Government have in mind. Much of the politicisation of which the Minister complains flows from the lack of clarity of the Government's objectives and their requirements of local authorities. The reason for this may be that the Government recognise that with the expenditure which they have in mind and which they project, running at about £60 million per annum, they do not see a way in which they can answer the criticism that civil defence will be a pretty meaningless effort in the circumstances of any war which can be conceived. They may prefer instead to take refuge in exhortation without having to answer detailed questions. If that is so, that rather vitiates their position. It suggests that their case is flawed and is not being advanced in wholly good faith.
I prefer to think that is not the reason for the Government's lack of clarity, lack of specific guidance and lack of proper instruction to local authorities. I think that the answer is that they have not turned their mind to these issues for a long time. It is only since the Hard Rock


experience blew up in their face that they have become aware that local authorities are not carrying out their responsibilities under current legislation.
Civil defence is a necessary national function in protecting the people from the failure of defence policy. We do not believe that defence policy will fail but it is imprudent not to plan for that possibility. That being so, I make it perfectly clear that the Social Democrats want effective civil defence. The speech by the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Latham) was a good starting point. It is a pity that it came two and a half hours after the debate started. I hope that the Minister of State will take his points on board and that the Minister who replies will give the Government's firm views on those points.

Mr. Neil Thorne: I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) speak in favour of civil defence. The hon. Gentleman made some valid, critical points. I trust that what he said carries the support of his entire party in the House. If so, that is a good sign.
I must express my wholehearted support for the introduction of the regulations. I deplore only the necessity for the Government these days to dot every "i" and to cross every "t" before some local authorities will agree to cooperate in spheres that are clearly for the public good.
As chairman of the National Council for Civil Defence, I meet many local emergency planning officers who wish to serve the public in a typically selfless way, but who are being frustrated by misguided local politicians at every turn, except when their services are called upon to help in a civil emergency, when they suddenly become popular. My criticism does not rest entirely on those who are refusing to co-operate with the minimal requirements placed on them.

Mr. Roland Boyes: Why does the hon. Gentleman assume that locally elected representatives are misguided but that nationally elected representatives have all the answers?

Mr. Thorne: If the hon. Gentleman will be patient, I shall come to that point later.
All Governments since the second world war, particularly those in power during the past 15 years, have let the civil population down badly in civil defence. I cannot understand how those who shout the loudest about survival and unilateral nuclear disarmament are blind to the basic humanitarian need to protect the population against every eventuality. No one I have ever met claims that there would be no survivors, even in a nuclear conflict. Civil defence is designed to cater not only for nuclear conflict. If that is so, surely it is every human being's obligation to offer help and assistance.
The saddest factor in civil defence is the lack of all-party agreement. The National Council for Civil Defence has supporters in all parties, but how I wish that we could all work towards the achievements in civil defence of countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, West Germany and. for that matter, China and the Soviet Union.
The Government spend enormous resources on defence without considering deeply enough the effects on the morale of our fighting forces. I had the honour to serve in the territorial forces for many years. During my service it was necessary for me to take part in exercises involving

nuclear possibilities. When taking part in those exercises, I frequently found that the soldiers also participating, particularly sergeants, were concerned about what would happen to their families if they were ever called upon to serve their country, especially abroad. The Government have to consider most seriously the question of what protection is to be provided to ensure that our soldiers can go off to protect the nation, confident in the knowledge that the Government are providing adequately for their families. It is unsatisfactory to expect them to leave their families to fend for themselves.
My right hon. Friend the Minister of State mentioned the need for direction, as the last resort. I am sorry that that was questioned by Labour Members. It is essential that we have a minimum level of civil defence throughout the country. If some authorities are careful in the civil defence that they provide and others provide little or nothing, we may find that, if the worst comes to pass, those living in areas that have made no civil defence preparation will realise the error of their ways and try to move into areas that have been prudent and provided for their ratepayers. It would be wrong to expect such authorities to have to take vast numbers of people from areas that had no adequate provision. There could then indeed be civil conflict if the Government do not ensure a basic minimurn service throughout the country. They have no alternative but to do so.
I ask the Government to spend more time and trouble on civil defence. If the man in the street were as keen on civil defence as I am, the Government would be persuaded to increase civil defence expenditure considerably.
Immediately after the war, when the atomic explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in everyone's minds, there was a requirement that the underground space in new buildings, whether used for car parking or storage. should have a civil defence capability. That was certainly the case with buildings in central London, but I do not know how long that requirement lasted, whether for two or three years or well into the 1950s. We may find out as a result of the new regulations that will require local authorities to carry out surveys.
Surely the Government should be thinking of today's new buildings. What civil defence capability are developers required to provide? What provision is there for an underground shelter here in the Palace of Westminster? I am not thinking for the benefit of hon. Members because, if an emergency were likely to occur, Members would probably depart for their constituencies fairly quickly. That seems particularly likely in the light of some remarks that I have heard today.
However, there would be a great need to have our underground car park available for such a purpose. Have the Government considered that? Was the construction of the car park such as to make the provision of shelter facilities simple and easy, or will we be in a panic and have to provide air conditioning plant, fresh water storage, and so on, under great pressure? Surely we should plan ahead so that we can make the necessary provision. I am sure that many people who work in this area would be grateful to know that they have been provided for.
The Government should also think about what they could do to encourage adequate civil defence facilities in older buildings. There are many things that they could do. For example, they could offer rate relief to those who make adequate provision. I would expect domestic shelters to be exempt from rates, and there are strong arguments


for allowing 50 per cent. rate relief on parts of commercial buildings that could be used as shelters in times of need. That would allow the owners or occupiers of the buildings to use the space for the time being whether for car parking or for storage under those beneficial arrangements.

Ms. Harriet Harman: As the hon. Gentleman is chairman of the National Council for Civil Defence, can he tell the House how much notice hon. Members will have to return to their constituencies in the event of a nuclear emergency? Will only hon. Members such as myself—or even hon. Members such as myself — be able to reach their constituencies? How much warning will be given to enable us to join our constituents in a nuclear shelter?

Mr. Thorne: I am sorry that the hon. Lady has been present for so little time that she did not hear much of the previous debate. In a time of conflict varying lengths of time apply. In the second world war six months elapsed before any hostilities of any magnitude took place which affected the civilian population but — [Interruption.] Labour Members may have more information than I. They may know what the Kremlin has in mind while I do not.

Mr. Bill Walker: Does my hon. Friend agree that aerial attacks against the United Kingdom did not commence until many months after the war started and the main attacks took place in 1940?

Mr. Thorne: That is exactly the point that I was making. Labour Members seem to think that they will have only four minutes in which to make preparations. That is clearly not the case. The idea that there would be no adequate warning and that an attack would come entirely out of the blue confines one to believing that that could happen only if some madman were to have his finger on a nuclear button somewhere in the middle east causing a nuclear attack to descend upon us without prior warning so that there would be no preparation for conflict. If we expect the attack to come from some country in Europe, the warning period will be much greater than the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) seems to think.
Other countries in Europe which have given much care and attention to this matter over the years have made adequate preparations. We are a long way from doing that. In the past 10 years Switzerland has made adequate provision for no less than 90 per cent. of its population in shelters which include provision for hospital treatment and many other facilities. It is alleged that we do not have the same resources to devote to that because we have other defence commitments and to do so would therefore take us longer. My point is that if we had started in 1945 and continued over the next 35 years there is no doubt that we would have more adequate protection today.

Dr. John Marek: Is not one of the significant matters to be taken into consideration that a so-called civil defence policy would make the Government more likely to want to wage a nuclear war and to win it? I have rarely listened to such unadulterated rubbish as I have tonight. We are in the realms of fantasy. [Interruption.] The loony Right should keep quiet for a bit. We have listened to much rubbish tonight. The Government have fought one war already and I fear that

they will fight another. We are still waiting for an answer to the earlier question. Why is local government irresponsible while the Government are not?

Mr. Thorne: The hon. Gentleman has not been here long but he should have listened to what I have been saying. I was asked in what way local government was acting irresponsibly. Responsible local authorities, which make provision, cannot be expected to accommodate the people who would flood into their areas if the need arose. That is what I mean when I say that some local authorities are acting irresponsibly.
If the Government require local authorities to provide something—whether education or shelters—they must provide it, and everyone will then be provided for by Government requirement. It is clear that some local authorities, if they had their way, would make no provision whatsoever. That would be completely irresponsible from the point of view not only of their own population — the electors who, perhaps in hindsight irresponsibly, put them there—but of those who had made adequate provision for the safety of their population.

Mr. Hattersley: The hon. Gentleman has now made the same point twice. When he made it for the first time, I thought that he was joking. He says that we need universal provision so that people from areas of inadequate provision will not flood into areas with adequate civil defence. Will he tell us when this flooding will take place? At what stage in the emergency will people move from one area to another?

Mr. Thorne: People would move in whatever time was available after the outbreak of hostilities. Does the right hon. Gentleman believe, like his hon. Friends, that there would be only four minutes' warning? Does he believe that there would be no build-up and that a catastrophe would arrive out of the blue?

Mr. Hattersley: indicated assent.

Mr. Thorne: I am astonished. The right hon. Gentleman's remarks earlier this evening suggested to me the faint hope that he felt some measure of sympathy for the idea of civil defence. I thought that, at the back of his mind, he believed in the right of people to try to survive in such an emergency. I am very disappointed in the right hon. Gentleman.
The Government must pay great attention to the training of civil defence volunteers. I welcome their present proposals.
The report of the board of science and education of the British Medical Association represents the views not of the BMA as a whole, but only of the board. I disagree with the board's views, but it made the valid point that the Government have not so far made adequate provision for civil defence. It would, however, be wrong to assume that the report represents a rejection of civil defence by the BMA at large.
I hope that there will be much more encouragement for civil defence research. There is room for much improvement in the interplay between various Departments. There should be co-operation between the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence, which has very good training facilities in this area. The Department of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food also have an important role to play. I


hope that all those Departments will be encouraged to play a full part in civil defence planning and that the Home Office will not be left to get on with it.
In the past few months I have noticed that questions on civil defence matters have received rather disappointing replies from Departments other than the Home Office. Those Departments are in need of education by my right hon. Friend.
The rate support grant penalty is a short-sighted solution. I understand that the proposal now put forward is that those local authorities which will spend more on civil defence in the coming years than they have in the past will be allowed an exclusion from their penalty assessments. I think that it is wrong in principle to leave authorities, which have been playing the game and doing their part, to suffer when others which have not been doing their hit get off scot-free. Such a policy is not a very good example for the future.
I entirely support the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland and other hon. Members who requested a 100 per cent. funding for civil defence. I do not think that there is any alternative to that figure, for the simple reason that we are dealing with a national matter. I appreciate that the Government want to leave ultimate control in the hands of the local authorities as civil defence is locally organised, but I believe that such funding should be taken out of the local rate arena. There is of course no reason why a suitable adjustment should not be made in the rate support grant to take account of this extra Government expenditure.
I believe that those who do not support the survival of the population in the most humanitarian way possible are entirely neglecting their responsibility to the population at large. I also believe that politicians must ensure that this matter is put right, and to do this they must make up for a great deal of lost ground during the past 20 years.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind the House that this debate ends at 11.30, and a large number of hon. Members wish to speak. There must also be time for the winding-up speeches.

Mr. Bill Michie: Much of what needs to be said has already been said by Opposition Members. Much information is available from the various organisations which have distributed good facts and figures about the effects of a nuclear war, and the irrelevance of some of the civil defence measures which are intended to be brought in. I do not intend to deal with the logical, technical or practical side of this matter. Most Opposition hon. Members understand what the practical difficulties are. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) was right when he pointed out that the Opposition are not against civil defence per se, but we are protesting about using civil defence as a con trick to persuade the general public to feel a sense of security. The false sense of security is the underlying lie, irrespective of whether the Government put in all the regulations in the world.
From listening to some Conservative hon. Members, on this subject they believe that if their house is on fire they must put it out. They seem to think at that level when talking about defence in a nuclear age. They seem to have a total misconception of what nuclear war means.
The Opposition accept that we must have civil defence. The Government say that they want to help people, but they have returned to the period of tin hats and red crosses. I am surprised that in their shopping list they did not have a Vera Lynn record. That shows how far the Conservative party has progressed.
I do not know how many hon. Members know much about nuclear weapons. Perhaps none of us knows a lot, but we all know a little. I know my little hit, as I was in the Royal Air Force—[Interruption.] I had the dubious pleasure of training for a nuclear war. It convinced me that no form of civil defence could save us from such an attack. In the name of truth the Government should tell the people what nuclear war is about. In a nuclear war the first essential point is to look after the armed forces so that they can make the first strike back. The second step is to look after the military forces on the ground. The last step is to see to the villages and homes. There is no civil defence. The important thing is to protect enough people to enable the country to strike back and to create as much devastation as possible in that other country. People do not seem to understand that. I think that it was the chairman of the National Council for Civil Defence who spoke about a warning beforehand, but—

Mr. Boyes: Six months.

Mr. Michie: A six-month warning is worse than the second-class post.

Mr. Neil Thorne: rose—

Mr. Michie: I shall not give way. I did not get tip when the hon. Gentleman was speaking.

Mr. Thorne: rose—

Mr. Michie: Many other hon. Members wish to speak and I shall make my point briefly.
Some people say that we have the right to decide about waging war. We in this Chamber may feel that we have the right—although that is debatable—to say that there should be a conventional war that could kill thousands of our fellow citizens. Perhaps we have that power and right, but no one on God's earth has the right to declare a nuclear war, which would decide the future of unborn children and of the rest of the world. No one has that right, not even Parliament.

Mr. Edward Leigh: I welcome the regulations as an essential first step by the Government in forcing local authorities to make effective plans for civil defence. Tonight Opposition Members have said that civil defence does not make any sense. If that is so, why does virtually every country in the world— from neutral Switzerland to the Soviet Union—have civil defence? The answer is that no one can foretell what horrors war will bring or whether we shall have to face a conventional or a nuclear attack. Every country in the world accepts that, on the perimeter of a conventional or nuclear attack, effective civil defence plans could save millions of lives. That is why Conservative Members believe that it is the humanitarian duty of Government to make those plans in the first place.
My criticism of the Government is that there is no point in laying down such regulations if Home Office officials are not prepared to enforce them. I refer to the question asked by the Earl of Kimberley in the other place about


south Yorkshire. South Yorkshire has, of course, decided to abolish civil defence. In reply to the noble Lord, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, Lord Elton, said:
My Lords, the South Yorkshire County Council has passed a resolution which includes continued compliance with the Civil Defence (Planning) Regulations 1974." — [Official Report, House of Lords, 9 March 1983; Vol. 440, c. 230.]
That answer was misleading, because although it is true that on 28 October 1981 south Yorkshire county council instructed its emergency sub-committee and officers to refuse to co-operate with all but the legal minimum under the civil defence legislation, at the same time it decided —and unlike the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) it is the authentic voice of the Labour party — to accept in total the Labour party's "Nine points on Civil Defence". I have a copy of it with me.
Paragraph 7 states:
We believe that the war planning role of Emergency Planning Officers should be discarded".
Legislation would be needed. However, south Yorkshire took it upon itself to discard civil defence. The Sunday Times said on 24 January 1982 that the county council had
told its emergency planning officers to stop work on plans for survival in a nuclear war".
A confidential document from the county council says:
As from October 1981 we have made no attempt to draft any further sections of our war plan. At this point seven sections had been drafted, approved and distributed; of the ten further plans which we envisaged drafting three are in the initial stages covering (1) Water, (2) Radiac Reporting and Release Scheme, (3) Communications. For some months now no work has been attempted to complete these drafts.
It is interesting that the document ended by saying:
It is no secret that the Home Office does not currently seek confrontation with dissenting local authorities on the level of civil defence preparations.
In other words, south Yorkshire is successfully cocking a snook at the government.
These regulations have been brought in today because the GLC employed David Turner Samuels, QC, to discover legal loopholes through which the GLC could wriggle out of its humanitarian duties to civil defence. Even that silk conceded that even under the existing legislation there was a clear duty to make plans which covered the matter specified in regulation 4(a) of the 1974 regulations and that such plans must bear a "reasonable relationship" to the problems with which they were intended to cope.
The GLC complied with that opinion, but south Yorkshire did not. It is misleading for the Home Office to say that the Government should not intervene because the south Yorkshire county council puts up a smoke screen and says that it will comply with the minimum legal requirements.
I believe that I have established that south Yorkshire has effectively abolished civil defence. I shall not argue the why's and wherefore's of civil defence. We are wasting our time tonight in promoting new regulations when the officials in the Home Office have not been prepared to enforce the old regulations.

Mr. Gavin Strang: The Government's attitude to civil defence is integral to its

policy on nuclear weapons. The Home Secretary in a previous Conservative Government, in a statement to the House of Commons in August 1980, said:
a review of civil preparedness for home defence was set in train so that this important element of our defence strategy could be considered as part of the improvement of our general defence effort.—[Official Report, 7 August 1980; Vol. 990, c. 790.]
More recently, United States Vice President Bush stated:
You have the survivability of command and control, a survivability of industrial potential, protection of your citizens and you have the capacity that inflicts more damage on the opposition than it inflicts on you. That's the way to come out on top in a nuclear war.
Fundamental to our opposition to these regulations is the belief that they condition the British people to believe that a nuclear war is survivable. It is disturbing that these regulations and this approach to civil defence has been pushed forward when the new generation of counter force nuclear weapons is being deployed. These are first strike weapons which undermine the policy of deterrence and mutually assured destruction. They are weapons to fight wars.
There is no defence from nuclear weapons. The British Medical Association provided the most authoritative report in this country on the likely effect of a nuclear attack on the British population. The Minister of State referred to it when he opened the debate. The report stated:
Civilised life as we know it, and the human values and the ethical standards upon which the practice of medicine is based would cease to exist in vast areas of these islands.
The Minister sought to undo some of the damage done by that notorious letter sent by the Home Office scientific research and development branch to the regional civil defence scientific advisers. He will have to do better than he did this evening. If the Minister looks at the letter which was printed in The Guardian he will see what it said about the BMA report:
The style of this presentation, and the arbitrary conclusions in favour of the SANA figures"—
that is Scientists Against Nuclear Arms—
where they were deemed by the inquiry to conflict with Home Office figures, reflected a high degree of bias towards the CND case, and lack of cogent argument or analysis. The report"—
it was released on 3 March—
must be regarded as strongly influenced by CND — type propaganda; it cannot be regarded as an objective, scientific document.
When the Minister replies he had better make it clear that the Government dissociate themselves from that smear on the integrity of the BMA's document. I hope also that the Minister will address himself at greater length to the Home Office estimate of the likely number of casualties following a nuclear attack. The Home Office estimates, of course, are much lower than those of the BMA. The BMA conclusion was based to a large extent on evidence given by Scientists Against Nuclear Arms who were relying heavily on the American work that has been done.
The Home Office is currently reviewing its estimate of the likely number of casualties following nuclear attack. Last July, I asked the Minister, in a written question, whether he would meet the independent SANA experts who are scientists with a great deal of knowledge of these matters. The Home Office scientists should meet those scientists to see whether they can start to reach some understanding on the basis of the estimates which should be made in calculating the figures.
I hope that I shall receive a better answer from the Minister when he replies. In the written answer on 20 July, the Minister of State said:
We shall consider this when the revised calculations on nuclear weapon effects are complete."—[Official Report, 20 July 1983; Vol. 46, c. 141.]
A great deal has been said about the likely number of casualties and survivors following a nuclear attack. I should like to quote from a letter that I received from the Minister with responsibility for Home Affairs and the Environment at the Scottish Office. It said:
Even if we did nothing to protect ourselves, both as a nation and as individuals, millions would survive any kind of nuclear attack which may realistically be envisaged, and would go on surviving.
That approach is totally at variance with the objective conclusions of the BMA report. There is no meaningful defence against nuclear weapons. Those who deceive the British people into believing that there is are irresponsible and should be condemned by the House.

Mr. Robert Litherland: On the point of deception, does my hon. Friend believe that the debate is ludicrous because it has given people a false sense of security and credence to the evils of the Arms race which is the Government policy?

Mr. Strang: The overriding anxiety of Opposition Members is that the threat of nuclear war is increasing because of the dangerous escalation of nuclear weapons. The philosophy of imbuing the British public with the idea that somehow they might survive a nuclear war and to compare nuclear war with the conventional second world war is grotesque.
For someone to say that we are likely to get six months' warning of a nuclear attack is ridiculous. If the Minister believes that, it is no wonder that he believes in these civil defence regulations.
The Government's civil defence policy is fundamentally flawed and it is not surprising that so many professionals outside the Government machine who are supposed to be involved in that work have no belief in the Government's approach.
Let me give one or two examples. There is the Government's document "Protect and Survive". No Government publication has ever been subjected to as much justified ridicule as that one. The idea that people will survive by spending 48 hours under the table in the kitchen is ridiculous. The Government's approach to evacuation has been one of vacillation as to its desirability. I hope that the Minister will tell us that the Government will publish the Home Office internal report on evacuation.
The Government are pretending that somehow these civil defence measures do not have be be justified in terms of a nuclear attack but can be defended in terms of a conventional attack. Does anybody believe that if conventional war breaks out between NATO and the Warsaw pact this will not lead to nuclear war? Will that not be because NATO is prepared to use nuclear weapons first? Is it not the case that if there were any validity in these supposed civil defence measures, clearly, immediately war broke out, conventional or otherwise, the

Government would have to set about putting these civil defence measures into operation? Thus, we cannot draw a distinction between civil defence for nuclear or conventional attacks.
It is despicable for the Government, as a last ploy, to pretend to local authorities that the regulations should be supported because they are not only about nuclear or conventional war but about civil emergencies such as an aeroplane disaster. The Government know that that is not the issue, and they have brought that red herring forward only to undermine the support for those brave local authorities that have stood out against these measures and have sought to explain to their people that there is no defence against nuclear war and no way of surviving or winning a nuclear war. It is because the Labour party stands four square with these local authorities that we are opposed to the regulations, and that is why the House should reject them.

Mr. Andrew Hunter: I am glad to have been called at this stage in the debate. I have listened with great interest to the speeches and in particular I wish to take up points made by my hon. Friends the Members for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Latham), for Harrogate (Mr. Banks) and for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh).
I listened to the speech of the right hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Freeson) and I do not challenge the sincerity of his rhetoric. He fairly expressed the view that many other Labour Members are making. I am aware that the great divide between his point of view and ours is that in any event we believe that some measures of civil defence are better than no measures. However, we are not talking just about "some measures" but are insisting on a central plan for the immediate aftermath of the holocaust. Time and again, Labour Members challenge us with the charge of deceit. My counter-challenge is that they are guilty of the greater crime: irresponsibility.
I welcome the appearance of these regulations. I understand that as recently as March the House turned its attention to civil defence. I note from my reading of Hansard that on that occasion Labour Members chose to make no contribution to the debate. I note also in that debate many expressions of concern about the provisions of civil defence. It is because I share this concern that I particularly welcome these regulations.
The level of preparation and the general state of preparedness are now worse than they were 45 years ago. The potential threat to our towns, cities, villages and countryside is now much greater. That disparity is unacceptable to a responsible Government.
As so many speakers have said, there is a quite unacceptable inconsistency in the level of planning and provision provided by the many local district authorities.

It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That, at this day's sitting, the Motion relating to Ways and Means may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour. —[Mr. Sainsbury.]

Civil Defence

Question again proposed.

Mr. Hunter: rose—

Mr. Boyes: I earlier commented on the absolute contempt for local democracy and local government shown by Conservative Members. If people feel that there is inadequate provision for civil defence in a certain area, they will replace those running the council. That is what democracy means. Every Conservative speaker tonight has implied that elected representatives of local authorities are irresponsible and that Conservative Members are responsible. Secondly—

Mr. Speaker: Order. This is becoming a rather long intervention. The hon. Gentleman must end with his second point.

Mr. Boyes: I am sorry to take so long, Mr. Speaker. Could the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) define what he understands to be the meaning of local democracy?

Mr. Hunter: By a strange coincidence, the hon. Gentleman gives the cue to my next point. I was about to refer to the article that we all received from the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, which acknowledges that
in the wide range of local government services we know of no other significant statutory duty upon local government which has not been complied with".
That is my point. A statutory duty has been imposed on local government that is not being fulfilled and observed. That is our quarrel—

Mr. Boyes: It is not a very good quarrel.

Mr. Hunter: With the advantage of hindsight and from the experience of last year's Hard Rock exercise, it is obvious that successive Governments of both parties have let matters slide. I therefore welcome the statutory instruments. I quarrel with nothing in them. They are a laudable attempt by central Government to regain control of a deteriorating position.
The word that I would use to describe the statutory instruments is the same word as that demanded by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley)— "realistic". The statutory instruments are realistic and entirely practical. They do not impose excessive demands on regions or districts in manpower, time and resources. Indeed, they allocate more resources to local authorities.
The statutory instruments steer the middle course between twin absurdities. I mentioned one absurdity—the unsatisfactory conditions now prevailing. The other is in seeking to allocate too much of our finite and limited national resources to civil defence. I acknowledge that that is an equal absurdity.
Although there is nothing in the statutory instruments with which I quarrel, we must not delude ourselves that they provide all the answers. They do not. In all my travels, discussions, reading research and conversation connected with civil defence, I have come across one overriding criticism which has not been touched by the regulations. It is the argument that our civil defence measures are blighted by a lack of standardisation and that that chronically impairs efficiency.
First and foremost, there is lack of standardisation in communications equipment. Within the sub-regions that

make up the south-east zone in which the county of Hampshire falls, the counties can communicate with the sub-region headquarters, but lateral communication between counties across the zone, between districts and from regions down to parishes is imperfect, simply because there is a lack of harmonisation in the equipment that is used. We must move rapidly towards central Home Office procurement of communications equipment, which is totally harmonised.
The lack of standardisation can also be seen in the related recruiting and training of volunteers. At present, there is no national syllabus for instructing volunteers. That is much to be lamented. At present, someone who gains knowledge, expertise or proficiency in one part of the country might find himself totally unqualified and untrained if he were to volunteer his services in another part of the country. Of course, that does not apply to the upper echelons of the emergency services, because the civil defence college at Easingwold provides uniformity at that level.
I should like to make one suggestion about volunteers. In my view, there is scope within the existing youth organisations and movements, especially in the cadet forces of the armed services, to include civil defence training. I do not say that those organisations should take on civil defence in a major way. Rather, I suggest that there is here a potential pool of recruitment for volunteers. I urge that due attention be paid to the possibility of civil defence being an option in the training programme of those organisations.
Some of my comments and other comments that have raised questions from the Opposition Benches have been detrimental to local authorities. Of course, there is another side to the coin. The Society of Local Authority Chief Executives has said:
Civil Defence is uniquely a significant duty imposed by law, which local government does not carry out. Nor, it should be added, is that duty adequately performed by the Government Departments and other agencies equally concerned.
I endorse that. I know from the contact that I have had with civil defence officers that there is a lack of confidence in the Home Office, particularly in the F6 department.
I welcome these draft regulations.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The Front Bench Speakers are hoping to catch my eye at 10.50 pm, so brevity would be appreciated on all sides.

Mr. Alex Carlile: Those of us who are convinced of the need for a comprehensive system of civil defence to cope with all forms of disaster are disturbed that the Government have failed to grasp the nettle of this problem in putting forward these regulations.
The Minister of State is still trapped by the 1948 Act with its terms of reference restricted to hostile attack. Liberal Members believe that the regulations are unacceptable because they are a half-hearted attempt at a little bit of civil defence, and impose the obligations to carry it out and pay for it in the wrong places. Such is the half-hearted nature of the regulations that I fear that the Minister of State has not read the regulations properly. I refer in particular to regulation 4(1)(b) of the general


functions regulations. I had the impression that the Solicitor-General had indeed read the regulations, because when the Minister of State was explaining that regulation he left the Chamber.
The regulations are objectionable on three principal grounds. First, they create a clumsy framework which imposes a multiplicity of obligations on a multiplicity of local authorities to do a multiplicity of things. The general functions regulations require neighbouring county councils to draw up plans to deal with the same problems in neighbouring areas with similar types of population and similar geographical characteristics. It is important to ensure that such regulations secure the future of democracy in local areas; but it is nonsense to duplicate functions and not provide a national framework to ensure that planning is done reliably.
One hears terrible stories. I think of the well-known and often-quoted incident of an emergency exercise in an area where there was only one keyholder for the emergency centre. The man left the key at home and had to return in his car to collect it. In another example, the local authority failed to provide adequate air conditioning. During an exercise it was discovered that anyone who went into the emergency centre would suffocate more quickly than he would perish as a result of a nuclear explosion. Central planning is essential. Central direction is needed, not for what happens inside an emergency centre, but for organising and equipping it.
Secondly, we oppose the regulations because the financial burden upon local authorities is an unacceptable imposition. The Minister of State said that regulation 4(1) (b) will merely involve increased expenditure of £2 million. I urge Government Members to read that regulation, because it does not provide merely for the expenditure of a couple of million pounds. It requires a local authority:
to establish, equip and maintain, in premises at each of the places specified in paragraph (3) below in relation to them, an emergency centre in which to control and co-ordinate action to be taken by them in the event of hostile attack or a threat of hostile attack".
An emergency centre cannot be in a school or village hall or in the local football stadium directors' offices. It must be located where it can survive not just the threat of hostile attack but hostile attack itself. That involves enormous expenditure.
I am even more disturbed about the fact that the grant regulations remove any reimbursement for the expenditure involved in establishing, equipping and maintaining emergency centres. They remove grant-aid and place the entire burden on the local authority. There is at present a 100 per cent. grant for the establishment, equipping and maintaining of these centres. If the draft regulations are passed, there will be no grant. It will be cut from 100 per cent. to zero. The result will be that 513 emergency centres will have to be built at a cost of about £102 million. Those are the estimates put forward at a time when central Government's total civil defence budget is a mere £69 million. It is intolerable for local authorities to have to look to the ratepayers for what must be enormous capital expenditure. If it was intended that the regulations should do only what the right hon. Gentleman says that in effect they will do, they should have been drafted in that way. If that is what he intends, that is not what he has got. He has in the regulations a power to impose much greater obligations on local authorities.
Our third reason for opposing the regulations is that civil defence provision is completely inadequate. "Protect and Survive" has been mauled to pieces on all sides and that includes some Conservative Members. We should compare regulation 4(1)(b), which sets up the emergency centres, with what is proposed in schedule 2 for the ordinary population — the ordinary people of Montgomeryshire whom I represent and the constituents of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House. What is being done to safeguard the ordinary population? Where are they to go? Is any start being made? I know that it would be a long job, but is any start being made to provide somewhere for them to be protected against nuclear explosions other than under their dining room tables or under the stairs? I suppose that a start is being made, but what a start!
Schedule 2, paragraph 4, provides for the utilisation of existing buildings only. Not one building is to be erected, not one structure is to be provided afresh for the protection of ordinary members of the public. That is an undeniable interpretation of the regulations and one which the right hon. Gentleman would not seek to deny. We say that there is no commitment in the regulations for the protection of the public and we have heard nothing today to change our view that the Government have not grasped the nettle and are not prepared to give a commitment for the protection of the public as a whole.

Mr. Hurd: I have followed the hon. Gentleman carefully and I still think that he is wrong about the emergency centres. We are not seeking a power to force local authorities to build new centres at the cost he imagines. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland will develop that point. I think that the hon. Gentleman will accept that the draft regulations mark a step forward for the protection of the general public in as much as local authorities are for the first time required to survey existing buildings or natural features to identify those which could be used in an emergency as shelters for the general public. That is a step forward.

Mr. Carlile: I shall deal with the right hon. Gentleman's two points in the order in which he made them. I cannot agree with his interpretation of regulation 4(1)(b). I ask him to read it again and take appropriate advice on what it means. It does not mean what he says. On his second point, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that there is a step forward, but it is a small and inadequate step without the necessary commitment. The right hon. Gentleman is hamstrung and trapped by the Civil Defence Act 1948. That Act sets out two grounds on which the Minister can act: first, to take such steps as are "necessary" for civil defence, and secondly to take such steps as are "expedient". We have the feeling that he is prepared only to take such steps which he considers to be necessary but unfortunately is ignoring those which are expedient.
A Home Office pamphlet entitled "Civil Defence: The Basic Facts" issued in recent days stated on the first page:
We must therefore maintain a level of civil defence activity which is proportionate to the degree of risk and which provides a firm base for rapid expansion should the danger of war increase.
My party is committed to civil defence. We believe that the regulations fall so dismally short of providing anything approaching a level of civil defence activity which is proportionate to the degree of risk that we must oppose them.

Mr. Keith Best: I listened with care to the hon. Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile). I appreciate his party taking the view that it believes in civil defence — an honourable view to take, but one which unfortunately is not shared by Her Majesty's Opposition. I hope that the hon. Gentleman has the grace to accept that it is a step forward, as my right hon. Friend pointed out to him in an intervention, to have local authorities look at buildings which could be used as shelters. Although he and I may agree that the provision which is being made is not a panacea for all ills and is not the ultimate, nevertheless it is a step in the right direction.
I regret that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) is not in his place—I appreciate that he may be taking a cup of tea—because as he spoke I was reminded of the story of the young cavalry officer who proposed a suicidal attack until restrained by his sergeant major with the words, "The aim, sir, is to surprise the enemy, not amaze them." The right hon. Gentleman put forward the most extraordinary proposition that, while he is not personally against civil defence, he is against it in the nuclear war context. However, he did not try—I suspect that he would not be able to do so—to explain how one could have civil defence in one form of military or civil emergency but not in another.
In that respect there is no distinction between the concept of a conventional or a nuclear war in civil defence terms; the object is to try to preserve as many lives as possible. That is true of whatever form of aggression is visited on our people and it is illogical for the right hon. Gentleman and his supporters to try to suggest otherwise. Indeed, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Strang) said that there was no way to distinguish one from the other. I suggest that he sorts out with his right hon. Friend exactly what the Labour party is saying.
The benefit of these regulations is their concentration on training, spreading the message of how people can have greater confidence in the future by enabling them to look after themselves. I hope that the Minister will extend that principle into other spheres; if local authorities are to undertake the training message, should we not look at, say, schools and other institutions where training along these lines could take place?
Let no Labour Member be under any illusion about the enforcement of the law. Local authorities which refuse to carry out the civil defence regulations will be in breach of the law of the land. If they do not like the law, they can seek to have it changed in this place. They cannot change it unilaterally by deciding to abrogate their responsibilities and place the populations in their charge in greater jeopardy in the event of conflict breaking out. It is so much better if those local authorities can co-operate with the Government in what is a joint exercise, which I believe should remain so. The last time that comissioners went into local authorities was in the 1950s. They went to Coventry and St. Pancras and the operation was not especially successful. It is to be hoped that we can continue to keep a measure of agreement.
I am sure that you will understand, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if I speak with some smugness. I am a happy man, just as the hon. Member for Montgomery should be a happy man. Both he and I live in nuclear-free Wales. That means that if there is to be a conflict involving

nuclear weapons, he and I and other hon. Members who have the privilige and distinction to represent the fair Principality will be exempt from the holocaust. I can only sympathise with those of my colleagues who have the misfortune to represent English constituencies.
Does any one believe that a nuclear-free zone can exempt us from the effects of a nuclear war? I fear that the proposition is being advanced seriously by the authorities that have declared these zones. In so doing, they are deluding the British population. What nonsense it is! My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Mr. Finsberg) posed a scenario in the Kremlin in which Mr. Andropov might have said, "Leave the GLC alone. Leave London alone, because it has declared itself to be a nuclear-free zone." Most of the local authorities in Wales have not even bothered to tell the Kremlin that they have declared nuclear-free zones. Mr. Andropov will not have the benefit of that knowledge. What nonsense this is—

Mr. Boyes: Absolutely.

Mr. Best: The concept of deterrence is twofold. The major factor is to pose to a potential aggressor the capacity to inflict upon him unacceptable damage. A corollary to that aggressive posture and that form of deterrence is to convince the potential aggressor that one has the ability to survive the form of attack that might be visited on Britain and, more importantly, the will demonstrably to survive such an attack. The events that are taking place in nuclear-free zone authorities are manifestations of the absence of will to survive in the event of an attack.
Opposition Members are saying that civil defence is no good and that there is no point in having any civil defence regulations because in the event of war we shall all die. Unfortunately, many of them will be mightily surprised when they find themselves still alive at the end of it and having to deal with the problems—

Mr. Boyes: rose—

Mr. Best: I regret that I cannot give way to the hon. Gentleman. I should like to do so, but the shortness of time makes it impossible for me to allow him to intervene. I shall not give way to him out of respect to other hon. Members who wish to contribute to the debate before the Front Bench replies commence.
In a pamphlet that we have all received, the nuclear-free zone authorities put forward an extraordinary dichotomy. They say that there is no point in having civil defence regulations because in the event of war we shall all die. They are assuming that there will be an all-out nuclear war with a blanket attack on the entire United Kingdom so that, effectively, the British Isles will sink beneath the waves. That is not realistic. Even if it is realistic, how can the same authorities come to the conclusion in the same document that expenditure on civil defence is insufficient? They cannot have it both ways. Either the entire concept of nuclear defence is a wicked deception on the British people—

Mr. Boyes: Exactly; I agree.

Mr. Best: —which is not the case, or we are not spending sufficient money on civil defence.

Dr. Marek: rose—

Mr. Best: The civil defence regulations may not be the last word in sophistication, but they are better than


nothing. Anything, in this respect, is better than nothing. It is a foolish and genuinely gross deception of the British people for Opposition Members to seek to put across the message that, in the event of a war, whether nuclear or conventional weapons are used, there will be no survivors. That is patent nonsense; it is a wicked message for Opposition Members to put across. If they ponder the nonsense of that argument they will realise that one must plan for survivors. In that event, the duty rests fairly and squarely on the House and local authorities, which have a statutory duty, to protect the lives of the citizens whom we and they have the privilege to represent.

Mr. Ken Eastham: This has been an amazing debate. Tory Members lacked conviction. I only wish that tomorrow the newspapers would report in full some of the statements by Tory Members so that the British people understand the muddled thinking within Government ranks.
The Minister amazed me when he commenced by saying that he thought that we should take politics out of civil defence. I wonder how anyone can take politics out of such a serious subject when invariably we are talking about war and weaponry. I think that it is a highly political issue. I am sure that all the British people think so, too.
Reference has been made to Hiroshima. The weaponry used at Hiroshima was like a peashooter compared with the weaponry now at large in various European countries and pointed at this nation. We are living in fool's paradise if we try to convince ourselves, as we have done on several occasions tonight, that civil defence will be like the old air raid precautions of 1939. That is more or less what Tory Members said. In 1939 they said that the war would be fought like the 1914 war. They never learn from the mistakes that they have made consistently.
The regulations represent an act of cruel Government deception. They are trying to fool the people about nuclear weaponry. The debate is not about civil defence, but nuclear warfare, and nothing less. We should not allow the Government to try to kid the people that they are interested solely in civil defence. Most authorities already operate forms of civil defence. When there is an air disaster, the fire and ambulance services and emergency forces are used readily, so we have to dispose of that argument, and face what the debate is about. It is solely about nuclear warfare. The Government are trying to lull the British people into believing that there is defence and that the bombs can be sent back into the sky and will not explode. We have been listening to such nonsensical things in the debate.
The Government have been trying to deceive the people. We have read authoritative reports by the British Medical Association and heard eminent scientists and even military leaders firmly saying that there is no defence against nuclear weapons. Even Lord Louis Mountbatten was in those ranks. He said that it was all futile.

Mr. Best: Read his speech.

Mr. Eastham: We have read his speech. It is most embarrassing to many Tory Members. I notice that that speech is rarely quoted.

Mr. Boyes: I notice that Tory Members have gone quiet now that my hon. Friend has said that.

Mr. Eastham: The Association of Metropolitan Authorities is on record as having denounced what the Government are trying to do and said that civil defence is being provided.
I wish to refer to a pamphlet entitled "Emergency Planning Team", which was introduced in 1981 by the then Conservative-controlled Greater Manchester council. The document, which was not written by Labour politicians, refers to nuclear war, not civil defence, air disasters and such matters. The document on the front page states:
Scientific advice says that 60 per cent. of population would survive serious nuclear attack on this country if action similar to that suggested in this booklet is taken".
The document also makes the following priceless remark:
Price rises of food items, crop failures and commodity shortages have reinforced the advantages of a housewife's well-stocked store cupboard.
It seems that the wealthy can make their way to their well-stocked and deep hunkers, but the poor, the unemployed and the pensioners will not be in that position.
Appendix B to the pamphlet refers to some of the items that a family should have in stock:
A cooker (camping gas type) with spare container or kerosene type with 5 gallons of paraffin, lighting (camping gas) candles and matches, buckets, garden water can, basins, shovel and spade, axe or hatchet, clock (not mains electric model), spare underwear, drip-dry clothing, rubber gloves, lice and flea powder, rodent poison, change of outer garments, boots and strong shoes, books, games, paper and pencils, a whistle or gong, radio, torch, saw, screwdriver and a hammer.
Domestic pieces such as mugs, plates, soup bowls, jugs, teapot, tupperware containers, cake tins, water—2 pints per person per day for 7 days. Food: Milk, baby food, coffee, tea sugar syrup, treacle or honey, Marmite, Oxo, soups, oatmeal, fruit, vegetables, rice — tinned, butter, margarine, meat, biscuits, sweets, vitamin tablets and pet food.

Mr. Stuart Holland: All under the stairs!

Mr. Eastham: All those goods are expected to fit under the stairs.
The document shows a sketch of a door leaning against a wall with sandbags on the top. An entire family are meant to crawl into that small space with the 97 gallons of water, the pet food and everything else. This document shows the absurdity of the whole situation facing us.
Let us face facts. People living in modern accommodation do not have cellars. Often, they live in high-rise flats. The document makes no mention of what would happen to them. It summarises the barmy thinking in Government circles about advising people how to make themselves safe.
A clergyman friend of mine told me recently that he has said to his parishioners that, if the sirens sound for a nuclear attack, he will open the doors of his parish church and they will all go inside and die together.

Mr. Bill Walker: I will not follow the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Eastham) into his church. I will leave him to it.
I welcome the regulations, two sets of which apply to Scotland. I see them as part of a continuing process of improving the nation's civil defence capability. If I have any argument—and one always does — it is that the regulations do not go far enough quickly enough. However, I regard them as a positive step.
An enemy attacking the United Kingdom would have to attack Scotland. Our strategic position would make that


inevitable. For example, the civilian radar installations and communications network would have to be knocked out by an aggressor if it intended an airborne or seaborne attack against the United Kingdom from the north, the west or the east.
I regard death from a bayonet as being just as unacceptable as death from a nuclear device or any other modern fiendish weapon. I also cannot accept the view that injury from a bayonet or a nuclear device is acceptable, but I argue that if a potential enemy has such weapons it is wise and prudent to plan against their possible use against the citizens of this country. That is why I have always advocated that we should have a viable civil defence organisation, complete with viable civil defence plans. We must plan before we can organise. I welcome the regulations, because they are a positive step towards the planning stage.
Anyone listening to the debate would think that all that we are concerned about in this ghastly world is nuclear attacks. I remind the House that more people died at Stalingrad than at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Yet people talk about fighting a conventional war in Europe as if it were acceptable. One rarely sees demonstrations by the so-called peace movement against a conventional war in Europe, but it could be nothing but ghastly and horrendous. The casualties would certainly exceed those at Stalingrad, and that cannot be acceptable to anyone who wants peace.
Deterrence has worked both ways. Each side has deterred the other and has believed that it has deterred the other. We have enjoyed peace in Europe for nearly 40 years.
Soviet policy, especially its military policy, was fashioned by the horrors of the Hitler war. After all, the Soviet Union had a non-aggression pact with Hitler and it is not surprising that the Soviets do not trust the West. I would not do so if I were in the Politburo. We must remember that when trying to negotiate with the Soviet military. Twice in recent times they have seen their land invaded by foreign armies that have reached the gates of Moscow. That has conditioned their attitude.
However, can we be certain that in 10 or 20 years, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—that massive conglomeration in which the Russions are a minority—faces demands for more civil freedoms and more consumer expenditure and, with a failed harvest, confronts unrest such as that now seen in Poland and other satellite countries, the men in the Politburo at that time might not be tempted into risky military adventures against the West?
That is the possibility about which we must think and against which we must plan. That is the possibility against which we must adequately prepare ourselves. Deterrence has worked. There is evidence that it has worked. Can we be sure, however, that, if the Soviets perceived any weakening in our determination to deter, they might not be tempted? Sane and rational people who want serious negotiations and Arms reductions recognise that they must go hand in hand with sensible policies of deterrence and civil defence.
The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) is, I understand, in agreement with those local authorities that do not accept the law or the edicts of central Government. He said, in effect, that he supported

them, and he gave his reasons for doing so. At their invitation, I have participated in debates in the council chambers of two authorities in Scotland that have declared themselves to be nuclear-free zones: Dundee City and Stirling district. The cases presented by the controlling Labour groups in those debates did not follow, not even remotely, the lines of the right hon. Gentleman's argument this evening. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman's hon. Friends will be able to tell him whether he or those local authorities are out of step.
Declaring a city, an area or a district to be a nuclear-free zone is about as effective as calling one's own home a burglar-free zone. It is one of the great nonsenses of our time. In an intervention earlier this evening, I mentioned that it was not unknown for local authorities in this country to refuse to accept the edicts of central Government. Before the 1939–45 war, the Clydebank council in Scotland refused to build Anderson shelters. As a result, many people died unnecessarily in the Clydebank blitz. That is a lesson that we should never forget. Clydebank council genuinely believed that Hitler would never attack Clydebank, but it forgot to tell him so. Clydebank was attacked, and many hundreds died.
Surely we can all agree on the need for peacetime planning, peacetime training and sensible precautions. People try to draw distinctions between nuclear and conventional war, but civil defence means no more than the defence of the civil population against possible events. Anyone who looks at the world we live in and rejects such things as impossible is not being realistic. We must take a realistic view of what may happen, although no one wants it to happen, and make our plans accordingly. If we plan sensibly and prudently, and do not pretend to be doing anything else, there is every possibility that we will be given the necessary co-operation. The public will see that we are being sensible. They will accept that no one, either in the Kremlin or in Downing Street, intends to fight a nuclear war and that we are simply planning properly for what may happen.
I have sat through the whole debate, and it has been most useful and interesting. If Opposition Members can find anything in my speech to suggest that I am a warmonger, they must be taking it out of context. I am a man of peace, but not a member of the peace movement. I believe that the best way to keep the peace is to do what we are doing.

Mr. Bruce Millan: As my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) said, we oppose these regulations, not because we are against civil defence as such, but because we believe that we are dealing not with a genuine attempt at a credible civil defence policy, but with an exercise in dishonesty and deceit.
The Minister of State complained that the debate about civil defence had been politicised, as though that had happened without regard to the Government's actions in the past four years. But of course it is the Government who have politicised the subject and who have turned this issue into an acute political debate. Indeed, the Minister made a very political speech this evening. We also heard a very political speech from the hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker). Other highly political speeches relating civil defence to the Government's defence policy have been made repeatedly by Conservative Members.
Of course, an example of the way in which the debate has been politicised is the Government's attempt to pretend that we could survive a nuclear war in a reasonable and civilised way if we took a few sensible, simple precautions. We simply do not believe that. The process started with that infamous document "Protect and Survive", published in 1980. When my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackely (Mr. Eastham) read out a list of the items that one is supposed to take into the little home shelter in the event of a nuclear war, he was doing no more than reading out details from that pamphlet. It has been comprehensively derided and ridiculed ever since its publication.
The Government's attempt to pretend that we could survive a nuclear war in some sort of reasonable order is not unconnected of course with the whole of the Government's defence policy. It is humbug for the Minister to say tonight that the Government are concerned only about humanitarianism, and that this issue has nothing to do with defence policy. Several quotations have already been given, but I shall give a few more. The present Home Secretary once said:
Civil preparedness should be adequate if the credibility of the military deterrent strategy is to be maintained.
The former Home Secretary said:
Civil defence…this important element of our defence strategy…an expanded civil defence programme is both prudent and necessary to achieve an appropriate balance in our defence capability.
These regulations, and the Government's whole attitude towards civil defence are very much bound up with the Government's overall defence policy. That is the first reason why the whole question has become an acute political issue. The second reason is that the
Government have not followed the logic of their argument that it is possible, with suitable civil defence arrangements, to provide a civilised form of life after a nuclear war, by then providing the considerable sums necessary to make that policy a reality.
The Government estimate that the civil defence policy for this country will cost between £60 million and £70 million a year. However, we spend £16,000 million a year on defence as a whole. It is impossible to take the Government seriously on the logic of their own argument when that is the sum of money that they are providing. I looked at the rate support grant figures for Scotland and at what is provided by way of specific grant in 1983–84 in Scotland by this Government, who are so dedicated to a credible civil defence policy. The sum is £l·2 million for the whole of Scotland in the current year. That makes nonsense of all the Government's protestations about the adequacy of their civil defence policy.
Let us look at the "intellectually honest" approach of the Government—to borrow a phrase from the Minister. It is revealing to look at the original draft of the civil defence regulations which was sent to local authorities and to compare it with what we have before us tonight. On the subject of evacuation, for example, the Minister of State challenged my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook when he mentioned the original evacuation proposal. The Minister, who is presumably in charge of civil defence, incredibly was not aware that the original regulations contained proposals for evacuation. I have the original draft regulations, and as my right hon. Friend said, local authorities were asked to plan for transferring members of the civil population from one area to another in the event of hostile attack. That is evacuation.
That proposal has been dropped. Why has it been dropped over the past year? Have the Government made some new assessment of its necessity? Has there been some significant change in the nuclear threat which makes evacuation no longer the right response in the event of hostile attack, or would it cost significantly more for local authorities to plan meaningfully for evacuation than the Government are willing to make available for civil defence?
What about shelters for the public? That was another matter mentioned tonight which has been dropped from the regulations. The original draft said that local authorities were to provide public civil defence shelters. One must note the phrase that followed:
whether or not priority of admission is accorded to specific persons or classes of person.
Local authorities were originally supposed to categorise members of the community into those who were to have priority for shelter and those who were not. That requirement has been dropped from the regulations. If the Government were serious about protecting the population and believed that there could be some genuine survival after a nuclear attack they should be asking local authorities to provide public shelters on a considerable scale, but they are not.
What about control centres? My right hon. Friend asked the Government about them because, under the original regulations the control centres were meant to be suitable for the period after the hostile attack. In other words, if one is going to run any community after a nuclear war there has to be a control centre which will be operational after nuclear attack. That also has been dropped from the regulations.
The local authorities simply have to provide control centres, but if they are not properly protected they will go when the balloon goes up just the same as everything else. That makes a farce of all the talk about central planning and so on that we have heard from the Government.
The Government have lost all credibility with the general public, and not just CND supporters, on their civil defence policy. Many members of the public who are not CND supporters believe in nuclear deterrence but do not believe that we have a credible civil defence policy from the Government. Any responsible body which looks at the subject comes inevitably to that conclusion.
We have had quotations from the BMA study and, as the Minister acknowledged when it was published originally the Government tried to smear it and say that it had been subject to undue CND influence. I am glad that the Government have at least had the good grace to withdraw that disgraceful allegation.
I want to quote one matter from the BMA report. It is not about taking a view as doctors and non-experts on the subject of nuclear warfare, but about the scale of possible attack on this country in the event of a nuclear war. Here is what it says about the casualty figures that might be expected following the detonation of a single, 1-megaton weapon over the United Kingdom:
The explosion of a single nuclear bomb of the size used at Hiroshima over a major city in the United Kingdom is likely to produce so many cases of trauma and burns requiring hospital treatment that the remaining medical services in the United Kingdom would be completely overwhelmed.
That is the reality that we face from a single bomb of the size used at Hiroshima if it were exploded here. If there were a nuclear war, we should not be expecting anything as simple as that to deal with—we should be expecting


bombing thousands of times more serious than what happened at Hiroshima. That is what makes it so disgraceful for the Government to pretend that, if we all take simple, sensible steps, somehow civilisation can go on much as before.
The Royal College of Nursing is another organisation that the Government like to quote to us, when there are troubles in the NHS, as a highly respectable and responsible organisation. Its working party report, produced the other day, said this about "Protect and Survive":
The Home Office booklet 'Protect and Survive' is, in our view, a naive and misleading misrepresentation of the effectiveness of the measures recommended as a means of protection in anticipation of a nuclear attack.
All the Government's civil defence policy is a misleading representation of the real problems that we should face in the event of a nuclear war. The Government have not persuaded the BMA, the RCN or any expert or professional body outside the Home Office, as my hon. Friends have said, on the credibility of their civil defence policy.

Mr. Hurd: We have persuaded the BMA and the RCN that they should join us in carrying out our plan. Will the right hon. Gentleman, following that example, persuade local authorities to do the same?

Mr. Milian: I am coming to the local authorities, but what the right hon. Gentleman has said about the BMA and the RCN is misleading.

Mr. Hurd: Why?

Mr. Milian: I was coming to the local authorities because it is principally with local authorities that we are dealing tonight. The Government have not persuaded the local authorities of the sense or purpose of these regulations. That is not unconnected with the fact that there has been a breakdown in relationships between the Government and local authorities over the past four years. What can the Government expect when they have dictated to and bullied local authorities unmercifully over the past four years? The Government have tried to determine rate levels, are penalising authorities over levels of expenditure, and have forced up local authority rates and the rest.
As a result of this breakdown, the Government would have been lucky, even if they had produced credible arrangements, to have had local authority co-operation. However, they do not have that, and the Government are deluding themselves if they believe that passing these regulations will mean that they suddenly have local authority co-operation when they have dragooned local authorities into doing their bidding simply by passing the regulations. There is no question of breaking the law, as some Conservative Members have suggested. I am not advocating that any local authority should break the law, and I hope that none of them will do so. However, there is a vast difference between breaking the law and cooperating enthusiastically. There is a large area in between those two, and the very most that the Government can expect from local authorities, and not only Labour-controlled ones, is a reluctant acquiescence in the regulations, if they are passed.
If the Government believe in the importance of civil defence, do they really want the regulations and

organisation to be carried out by reluctant local authorities that will drag their feet and not give the wholehearted cooperation essential for success? It is no use Conservative Members talking about Home Office officials rather than Home Office Ministers forcing local authorities to do something that they do not want to do; monitoring them, sending in comissioners and so on. Apart from the defects in merit, the regulations will not work because they will not receive the minimum level of co-operation to make them work. Local authorities do not believe in the regulations, and they are sensible to take that view.
Why does the Minister think that he will improve the position by trying to marry civil defence with the handling of civil emergencies? That will not solve the problem. Every local authority accepts responsibility for dealing with civil emergencies, but if the Government think that, because local authorities accept that responsibility they will willingly accept the responsibilities in the regulations, they are deluding themselves.
If the Government are to get themselves out of the mess they have made on civil defence, they will have to begin on an entirely different basis. They must admit what we all know to be true—that we cannot survive a nuclear attack in any civilised way. The idea that we can produce plans and regulations to enable us to survive is absolute nonsense and an absurdity. While the Government try to persuade local authorities and others of that, they will have no sensible civil defence policy. If the Government accept that—I do not believe that they will—it may be possible to talk sensibly to local authorities.
We have probably gone past that stage. There was the first glimmer of recognition of that fact in the speeches of hon. Members opposite tonight. All the talk about centralised control recognises that the Government will not achieve their objectives by leaving the matter with local authorities. If the Government believe that they have the right civil defence policy, they had better take over complete responsibility for it. They will not get the job done by local authorities, either willingly or unwillingly.
The attitude taken by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, without dissent from Conservative members —the regulations are anathema to local authorities—is that if the Government want this civil defence policy they had better organise it themselves and not pretend that they can do it with the co-operation of local authorities.
The Government have brought this chaos and disaster upon themselves. The regulations will make an already chaotic position even worse. If the Government had any sense they would withdraw them, even now at this last minute, and think again.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Michael Ancram): We have had what I am sure all hon. Members agree is a comprehensive debate on civil defence —the first of its kind for some time. On occasions, we have perhaps strayed beyond the exact limits of the regulations into the wider sphere of nuclear weapons and national defence. That is not surprising. However, I want to concentrate mainly on the case for civil defence, which I believe stands on its own.
The case, essentially and simply—and I believe that it should be restated — is that no Government can guarantee that this country will never again be involved or caught up in war, directly or indirectly. Even if we were to give up our nuclear deterrent, abandon our NATO allies


and be prepared to submit unconditionally to any military threat, there could still be no assurance that this country would not be subject to some form of attack in war, and no assurance that we could wholly escape the effects of any nuclear conflict between other nations. The facts of geography—inescapable as they are—make this plain. So, even if we took those extreme steps, we should still need civil defence. If we cannot be sure that we shall never again be involved or caught up in any kind of warfare, nuclear or conventional, we have a duty to do what we can to protect our people from its effects, were it to happen.
The Government understand the concern that is felt by many caring and honest people about the possession of nuclear weapons. We share that concern and we share their desire for peace. That is why we maintain our strenuous diplomatic efforts to promote disarmament and make the world a safer place. However, the world would not be a safer place if we denied ourselves our capability to deter aggressors, and the need for civil defence measures would not disappear if we disarmed. Every country must undertake civil defence measures to protect its people. Any Government who do not do so are ignoring their basic responsibilities.
Essential services in Britain are provided through a complex division of duties between central and local government. That division can operate effectively only if there is good will and a responsible attitude on each side. When we came into government in 1979, we found a need to invest greater effort and resources in civil defence. We made it clear that the former partnership with local authorities should continue so that we could achieve the necessary improvement in our national civil defence planning. We identified with the local authorities as our main partners because they have the relevant experience, resources and knowledge of the particular needs within their own areas. Regrettably, although there have been notable exceptions, by and large authorities did not respond adequately to the lead we provided in 1980. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh) illustrated that fact remarkably well. It has left the population in large areas of the country without adequate arrangements for their welfare and protection in the event of war. What is perhaps more important, it has disrupted the preparations of many other responsible authorities.

Mr. Deakins: rose—

Mr. Ancram: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, but, in view of the time, I shall not give way very much during my speech.

Mr. Deakins: I thank the Minister for giving way. Will he say something about the role of public utilities in providing essential services and how they fit into this pattern of central and local government co-operation?

Mr. Ancram: I shall come to that matter when I answer the questions that have been asked during the debate.
Clearly, the situation that the Government inherited could not continue. We in government have played our part by encouragement and exhortation and by making available our share of additional resources, but these have not been used, and authorities have been able to shelter behind the inadequacies of the earlier regulations. That is why the regulations for England, Wales and Scotland now

before the House are necessary. They are necessary to make sure that basic local preparedness is carried forward and to assist those authorities which are anxious to protect their people by strengthening, extending and setting out more clearly the duties of local authorities and by providing increased financial support for local expenditure. We seek to achieve those aims not by rejecting the policies followed by the Opposition when in government, but rather by adopting them, building on them and extending them only where necessary. Scottish Members who were in the House 10 years ago—some of them are here tonight—will find much that is familiar in these regulations if they compare them closely with those made in 1975 by the then Secretary of State for Scotland, now Lord Ross of Marnock.
These regulations are in no sense warlike instruments. They merely provide a basis for local authorities to take simple precautions at minimal cost as an insurance premium against such an event happening. The then Labour Government's spokesman, the hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Ewing), said:
It is the sincere hope of all of us that the plans will never need to be implemented, but that is no reason for not attempting to make them".—[Official Report, Third Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, 7 May 1975; c. 10]
What the hon. Gentleman said then holds true today. I hope that the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Deakins) and, more importantly, the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Milian), who was the Secretary of State for Scotland and responsible for civil defence in Scotland, will appreciate that when they were in government they took the view that they say we should not take tonight.
That is why I was surprised to hear Opposition Members suggest that some authorities will pay no heed to the regulations. I do not believe that this will be so. I am confident that no responsible local authority will fail to discharge statutory duties laid upon it by Parliament. But, even if I am wrong, I want to make it plain that the people of this country must and will receive adequate protection.
I remind my hon. Friends that the powers exist to ensure that the functions prescribed in the new regulations are carried out, and that it remains open to us to use these powers should any authority be so irresponsible as to disregard the fundamental interests of its citizens I hope that it will not be necessary to use those powers.
Many matters were raised, and I cannot deal with them all. The Opposition case seems to be divided into two parts. Some Opposition Members believe that civil defence is unnecessary and wrong because they happen to be against the nuclear deterrent. I find it more difficult to understand others, particularly on the Opposition Front Bench, who claim that their opposition is based solely on the Government's presentation of the civil defence proposals and that they are not against civil defence itself.
The right hon. Members for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) and for Govan spoke about evacuation. The Government never made a decision to move to an evacuation policy —[Interruption.] If the right hon. Member for Govan would listen for once, he would find out the truth. The first draft of the regulations required local authorities to prepare evacuation plans in case the Government decided in future that a national evacuation scheme was made necessary by an international crisis. We continually review that part of the policy. No decision has


been taken. In view of the misunderstandings among local authorities at the time, which were reflected in Opposition Members' speeches tonight, the proposal was dropped from the regulations.

Mr. Strang: If the Government want an objective debate on the evacuation issue, they should publish the internal Home Office report on evacuation.

Mr. Ancram: The hon. Gentleman should know that there is no such report within the Home Office. The matter is continually reviewed.
A number of hon. Members talked about emergency centres and the cost that they might impose upon local authorities. I should like to clear up the misunderstanding. Many centres already exist and cover counties in England and regions in Scotland. By and large they are modest schemes. The centres tend to be in the basements of large municipal buildings. The cost of repairing and converting is between £10,000 and £30,000. Therefore some of the figures that have been bandied about by Labour Members do not bear further consideration.

Mr. Hattersley: I am anxious to understand what it is that makes a room in a basement a control centre. How would we distinguish it from a different room in a different basement that was not a control centre?

Mr. Ancram: Apart from anything else, if the right hon. Gentleman had been studying the regulations, he would have found a communications system within that room. I do not know how many basements he visits in which he expects to find technology of that type, but certainly that is not my experience of basements generally.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Mr. Finsberg) asked my right hon. Friend to avoid delays. I can reassure him that the regulations come into effect 28 days after they are approved by Parliament, so there will be no delay.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: I was able to read that. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State said that after the regulations come into force the process of consultation will be drawn out. That was what I wanted reassurance about.

Mr. Ancram: We will, of course, over a period, receive and discuss suggestions. It would be a strange system were we not able to do that. I can assure my hon. Friend that within 28 days of the regulations being approved they will become effective.
The hon. Member for Walthamstow made an important point about compulsory training. The regulations do not compel any individual local authority employee to take part in civil defence if he refuses to do so. That has been said categorically to the TUC and to the local authority associations. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be satisfied on that point.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Latham) made several interesting points to which I listened with a good deal of attention. I cannot say at the moment whether the resources for the inspectorate or the regional structure would be justified, but I am sure that he will appreciate that that depends to a large extent on the manner in which local authorities discharge their functions after the regulations are passed. We will certainly keep such proposals in mind, but at present I do not consider that there is a case for them, until we see how the

regulations work in practice. My hon. Friend also asked about the staff in the Home Department. I should like to reassure him that the civil defence staff of the Home Office, of the Scottish Home and Health Departments and of the Civil Defence college have been substantially increased since 1980 and they will monitor the performance of local authorities.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) suggested that a 100 per cent. grant for civil defence might be an appropriate way of dealing with this matter. Civil defence must necessarily be a local authority responsibility, because in an emergency it will be the responsibility of local people. It is therefore right that they should make a financial contribution to the cost of the service, although that contribution is being kept small. The combined effect of 75 per cent. grant and 100 per cent. grant on certain expenditure is that about 85 per cent. of local authority expenditure on civil defence is borne by central Government.
The hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Strang) asked about the casualty estimates. I suspect that he has been visited by the same man who has been to see me in my constituency, because I recognised some of the facts and figures that the hon. Gentleman produced. When the Home Office casualty assessment rules are revised, the results will be published, probably next year. I know that the Home Ofice expects that it will be possible to reach broad agreement on the ground rules within the scientific community for casualty assessments from particular levels of attack. I hope that those will be available as rules which may then be applied in a rather less divisive way than some of the assumptions which we have heard tonight.
Too many people incorrectly assume that if war came —we all hope that it will not—it would take a form that could be predicted either by the Government or by themselves. That is absurd. We can as readily predict the type, location, duration, intensity and casualties of natural disasters as we can of war. That is why we question the claim that any war would inevitably be fought with nuclear weapons and on such a scale and with such intensity that inevitably the whole population would be wiped out.
No one can know in advance what form a future conflict might take. It might involve, as some of my hon. Friends have said, no more than conventional bombing; it might stop at limited nuclear exchanges; it might extend to full-scale nuclear warfare. As the opponents of civil defence cannot know what would happen, they cannot properly claim that inevitably everyone in the country would be killed and that there is no point in laying plans to help the survivors.
What we face, in short, is the need to plan flexibly for circumstances which are unpredictable. The Government have never denied that any attack on this country involving nuclear weapons — no matter how few — would be horrendous and that the casualties would be appalling. Equally, it is wrong of those who disagree with the need for civil defence to deny that under any conceivable form of attack there would be many survivors, that their numbers would be increased if sensible protective measures were taken in advance and that their prospects for continued survival and recovery would be far greater if proper plans were formulated.
It is even more wrong to suggest that civil defence is a war-mongering activity. It is quite the opposite. It is, as my right hon. Friend said, a humanitarian endeavour intended to relieve potential human suffering. It is


paradoxical that those who claim to have the interests of their fellow citizens at heart at the same time seek to obstruct protective measures being taken on their behalf. These measures need not be elaborate. Those who claim that civil defence is useless because there is no defence against nuclear weapons are ignoring the realities.
The Government are committed to peace—a peace which we believe our defence policy will maintain and preserve. But we recognise, as we must, that no Government have control over our own destiny. In an imperfect world there must always be dangers and risks, and it is these dangers and risks which in all responsibility we must be prepared to reduce. We cannot completely eradicate them, and it is essentially foolish to suggest that we can, so we have a moral responsibility—both central and local government—to make contingency arrangements to alleviate the hardships which may result.
There is nothing inconsistent in preparing for eventualities which we hope and believe will not occur. The last Labour Government did so in terms of civil defence, and we are doing the same. It is the insurance which many of us take out to cover things which we hope and believe will not happen to us in our ordinary lives and yet which commonsense dictates we should make provision for.
That, in essence, is what civil defence is about. It is ensuring as best we can and within the realistic limits of our capabilities and our assessment of the risk the survival of people whose lives might otherwise be lost, and enhancing as best we can their continual survival and rehabilitation. That is why these new civil defence regulations have been laid before the House.
I find it difficult to understand the view of some hon. Members that we should not bother. I do not intend to discuss their motives. I will only say that they would have us believe that a threat is the less if we do not guard against it and that a risk is diminished if we do not provide for it. The lessons of history do not bear that out. However, they go further, for they seek to undermine the basic responsibility of the state, and that is to secure and protect the survival of its citizens. Any Government who ignore that responsibility forfeit their claim to the trust of the people. This Government will not shirk that responsibility. Nor, I believe, will the House. That is why I ask with confidence for the approval of these regulations tonight.

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 335, Noes 195.

Division No. 51]
[11.30 pm


AYES


Adley, Robert
Benyon, William


Alexander, Richard
Berry, Sir Anthony


Amery, Rt Hon Julian
Best, Keith


Amess, David
Bevan, David Gilroy


Ancram, Michael
Biffen, Rt Hon John


Arnold, Tom
Biggs-Davison, Sir John


Ashby, David
Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter


Aspinwall, Jack
Body, Richard


Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H.
Bonsor, Sir Nicholas


Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)
Bottomley, Peter


Baker, Kenneth (Mole Valley)
Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)


Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)
Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)


Baldry, Anthony
Boyson, Dr Rhodes


Banks, Robert (Harrogate)
Braine, Sir Bernard


Batiste, Spencer
Brandon-Bravo, Martin


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Bright, Graham


Bellingham, Henry
Brinton, Tim


Bendall, Vivian
Brittan, Rt Hon Leon


Bennett, Sir Frederic (T'bay)
Brooke, Hon Peter





Brown, M. (Brigg &amp; Cl'thpes)
Harvey, Robert


Browne, John
Haselhurst, Alan


Bruinvels, Peter
Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael


Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon A.
Hawkins, C. (High Peak)


Buck, Sir Antony
Hawksley, Warren


Budgen, Nick
Hayes, J.


Bulmer, Esmond
Hayhoe, Barney


Butcher, John
Hayward, Robert


Butler, Hon Adam
Heathcoat-Amory, David


Butterfill, John
Heddle, John


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Henderson, Barry


Carttiss, Michael
Hickmet, Richard


Chalker, Mrs Lynda
Hicks, Robert


Chapman, Sydney
Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.


Chope, Christopher
Hill, James


Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th S'n)
Hind, Kenneth


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Hirst, Michael


Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)
Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)


Clarke Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)


Clegg, Sir Walter
Holt, Richard


Colvin, Michael
Hooson, Tom


Coombs, Simon
Howard, Michael


Cope, John
Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)


Cormack, Patrick
Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)


Couchman, James
Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'ldford)


Critchley, Julian
Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)


Crouch, David
Hubbard-Miles, Peter


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Hunt, David (Wirral)


Dickens, Geoffrey
Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)


Dicks, T.
Hunter, Andrew


Dorrell, Stephen
Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.
Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick


Dover, Denshore
Jessel, Toby


du Cann, Rt Hon Edward
Johnson-Smith, Sir Geoffrey


Dunn, Robert
Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)


Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)
Jones, Robert (W Herts)


Eggar, Tim
Jopling, Rt Hon Michael


Emery, Sir Peter
Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith


Evennett, David
Kershaw, Sir Anthony


Eyre, Reginald
Key, Robert


Fairbairn, Nicholas
King, Roger (B'ham N'field)


Fallon, Michael
King, Rt Hon Tom


Farr, John
Knight, Gregory (Derby N)


Favell, Anthony
Knight, Mrs Jill (Edgbaston)


Fenner, Mrs Peggy
Knowles, Michael


Finsberg, Geoffrey
Knox, David


Fletcher, Alexander
Lamont, Norman


Forman, Nigel
Lang, Ian


Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)
Latham, Michael


Fox, Marcus
Lawler, Geoffrey


Franks, Cecil
Lawrence, Ivan


Fraser, Rt Hon Sir Hugh
Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel


Fraser, Peter (Angus East)
Lee, John (Pendle)


Freeman, Roger
Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)


Fry, Peter
Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark


Gale, Roger
Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)


Galley, Roy
Lightbown, David


Gardiner, George (Reigate)
Lilley, Peter


Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)
Lloyd, Ian (Havant)


Garel-Jones, Tristan
Lloyd, Peter, (Fareham)


Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian
Lord, Michael


Glyn, Dr Alan
Lyell, Nicholas


Goodlad, Alastair
Macfarlane, Neil


Gorst, John
MacGregor, John


Gow, Ian
MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)


Gower, Sir Raymond
MacKay, John (Argyll &amp; Bute)


Grant, Sir Anthony
Maclean, David John.


Green way, Harry
McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)


Gregory, Conal
McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)


Griffiths, E. (B'y St Edm'ds)
Madel, David


Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)
Major, John


Grist, Ian
Malins, Humfrey


Ground, Patrick
Malone, Gerald


Grylls, Michael
Maples, John


Gummer, John Selwyn
Marland, Paul


Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)
Marlow, Antony


Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)
Maude, Francis


Hampson, Dr Keith
Mawhinney, Dr Brian


Hannam, John
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin


Hargreaves, Kenneth
Mayhew, Sir Patrick






Mellor, David
Sims, Roger


Merchant, Piers
Skeet, T. H. H.


Miller, Hal (B grove)
Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)


Mills, Iain (Meriden)
Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)


Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)
Soames, Hon Nicholas


Miscampbell, Norman
Speed, Keith


Mitchell, David (NW Hants)
Speller, Tony


Moate, Roger
Spence, John


Monro, Sir Hector
Spencer, D.


Montgomery, Fergus
Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)


Moore, John
Squire, Robin


Morris, M. (N'hampton, S)
Stanbrook, Ivor


Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)
Stanley, John


Moynihan, Hon C.
Steen, Anthony


Murphy, Christopher
Stern, Michael


Neale, Gerrard
Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)


Needham, Richard
Stevens, Martin (Fulham)


Neubert, Michael
Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)


Newton, Tony
Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)


Nicholls, Patrick
Stewart, Ian (N Hertf'dshire)


Norris, Steven
Stradling Thomas, J.


Onslow, Cranley
Sumberg, David


Oppenheim, Philip
Tapsell, Peter


Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.
Taylor, John (Solihull)


Osborn, Sir John
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Ottaway, Richard
Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman


Page, Richard (Herts SW)
Temple-Morris, Peter


Parris, Matthew
Terlezki, Stefan


Patten, John (Oxford)
Thomas, Rt Hon Peter


Pattie, Geoffrey
Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)


Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth
Thorne, Neil (Ilford S)


Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian
Thornton, Malcolm


Pink, R. Bonner
Thurnham, Peter


Porter, Barry
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Powell, William (Corby)
Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)


Powley, John
Tracey, Richard


Prentice, Rt Hon Reg
Twinn, Dr Ian


Price, Sir David
van Straubenzee, Sir W.


Proctor, K. Harvey
Vaughan, Dr Gerard


Pym, Rt Hon Francis
Viggers, Peter


Raffan, Keith
Waddington, David


Raison, Rt Hon Timothy
Wakeham, Rt Hon John


Rathbone, Tim
Waldegrave, Hon William


Rees, Rt Hon Peter (Dover)
Walden, George


Renton, Tim
Walker, Bill (T'side N)


Rhodes James, Robert
Walker, Rt Hon P. (W'cester)


Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas
Wall, Sir Patrick


Ridsdale, Sir Julian
Waller, Gary


Rifkind, Malcolm
Walters, Dennis


Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey
Ward, John


Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)
Wardle, C. (Bexhill)


Robinson, Mark (N'port W)
Watson, John


Roe, Mrs Marion
Watts, John


Rossi, Sir Hugh
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Rost, Peter
Wheeler, John


Rowe, Andrew
Whitfield, John


Rumbold, Mrs Angela
Whitney, Raymond


Ryder, Richard
Wiggin, Jerry


Sackville, Hon Thomas
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Sainsbury, Hon Timothy
Winterton, Nicholas


St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.
Wolfson, Mark


Sayeed, Jonathan
Wood, Timothy


Scott, Nicholas
Woodcock, Michael


Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)
Yeo, Tim


Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Shelton, William (Streatham)



Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)
Tellers for the Ayes:


Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)
Mr. Carol Mather and Mr. Robert Boscawen.


Shersby, Michael



Silvester, Fred





NOES


Abse, Leo
Bagier, Gordon A. T.


Adams, Allen (Paisley N)
Banks, Tony (Newham NW)


Alton, David
Barron, Kevin


Anderson, Donald
Beckett, Mrs Margaret


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Beith, A. J.


Ashdown, Paddy
Bell, Stuart


Ashton, Joe
Bennett, A. (Dent'n &amp; Red'sh)


Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)
Bermingham, Gerald





Blair, Anthony
Hughes, Roy (Newport East)


Boyes, Roland
Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)


Bray, Dr Jeremy
Hughes, Simon (Southwark)


Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)
John, Brynmor


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Johnston, Russell


Brown, N. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne E)
Jones, Barry (Alyn &amp; Deeside)


Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)
Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald


Caborn, Richard
Kilroy-Silk, Robert


Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd &amp; M)
Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil


Campbell, Ian
Kirkwood, Archibald


Canavan, Dennis
Lambie, David


Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)
Lamond, James


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Lead bitter, Ted


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)


Clarke, Thomas
Lewis, Terence (Worsley)


Clay, Robert
Litherland, Robert


Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S.)
Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)


Cohen, Harry
Lofthouse, Geoffrey


Coleman, Donald
Loyden, Edward


Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.
McCartney, Hugh


Cook, Frank (Stockton North)
McDonald, Dr Oonagh


Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)
McGuire, Michael


Corbett, Robin
McKay, Allen (Penistone)


Corbyn, Jeremy
Mackenzie, Rt Hon Gregor


Cox, Thomas (Tooting)
McTaggart, Robert


Craigen, J. M.
McWilliam, John


Crowther, Stan
Madden, Max


Cunliffe, Lawrence
Marek, Dr John


Cunningham, Dr John
Marshall, David (Shettleston)


Dalyell, Tam
Martin, Michael


Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)
Mason, Rt Hon Roy


Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly)
Maxton, John


Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'ge H'l)
Maynard, Miss Joan


Deakins, Eric
Meacher, Michael


Dewar, Donald
Meadowcroft, Michael


Dixon, Donald
Michie, William


Dobson, Frank
Mikardo, Ian


Dormand, Jack
Millan, Rt Hon Bruce


Douglas, Dick
Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)


Dubs, Alfred
Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)


Duffy, A. E. P.
Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)


Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.
Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)


Eadie, Alex
Nellist, David


Eastham, Ken
Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon


Ellis, Raymond
O'Brien, William


Evans, loan (Cynon Valley)
O'Neill, Martin


Evans, John (St. Helens N)
Orme, Rt Hon Stanley


Ewing, Harry
Park, George


Fatchett, Derek
Parry, Robert


Faulds, Andrew
Pavitt, Laurie


Field, Frank (Birkenhead)
Pendry, Tom


Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)
Penhaligon, David


Fisher, Mark
Pike, Peter


Flannery, Martin
Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)


Foot, Rt Hon Michael
Prescott, John


Forrester, John
Radice, Giles


Foulkes, George
Randall, Stuart


Fraser, J. (Norwood)
Redmond, M.


Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald
Richardson, Ms Jo


George, Bruce
Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)


Godman, Dr Norman
Robertson, George


Golding, John
Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)


Gould, Bryan
Rooker, J. W.


Gourlay, Harry
Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)


Hamilton, James (M'well N)
Rowlands, Ted


Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)
Ryman, John


Hardy, Peter
Sedgemore, Brian


Harman, Ms Harriet
Sheerman, Barry


Harrison, Rt Hon Walter
Sheldon, Rt Hon R.


Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith
Shore, Rt Hon Peter


Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy
Short, Mrs R.(W'hampt'n NE)


Heffer, Eric S.
Silkin, Rt Hon J.


Hogg, N. (C'nauld &amp; Kilsyth)
Skinner, Dennis


Holland, Stuart (Vauxhall)
Smith, C.(Isl'ton S &amp; F'bury)


Home Robertson, John
Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'kl'ds E)


Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)
Snape, Peter


Howells, Geraint
Soley, Clive


Hoyle, Douglas
Spearing, Nigel


Hughes, Mark (Durham)
Steel, Rt Hon David


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)
Stott, Roger






Strang, Gavin
White, James


Straw, Jack
Wigley, Dafydd


Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)
Williams, Rt Hon A.


Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)
Wilson, Gordon


Thompson, J. (Wansbeck)
Winnick, David


Thorne, Stan (Preston)
Woodall, Alec


Tinn, James
Young, David (Bolton SE)


Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.



Wallace, James
Tellers for the Noes:


Warden, Gareth (Gower)
Mr. Harry Cowens and Mr. Ron Leighton.


Wareing, Robert



Welsh, Michael

Question accordingly agreed to.

Resolved,
That the draft Civil Defence (Grant) (Amendment) Regulations 1983, which were laid before this House on 12th July, be approved.

Resolved,
That the draft Civil Defence (General Local Authority Functions) Regulations 1983, which were laid before this House on 12th July, be approved.—[Mr. David Hunt.]

Resolved,
That the draft Civil Defence (Grant) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 1983, which were laid before this House on 12th July, be approved.
That the draft Civil Defence (General Local Authority Functions) (Scotland) Regulations 1983, which were laid before this House on 12th July, be approved.—[Mr. Ancram.]

Ways and Means

OIL TAXATION

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That provision may be made for and in connection with—

(a) varying the reliefs available for certain expenditure incurred (before as well as after the passing of this Resolution) in connection with assets used or to be used in connection with oil fields; and
(b) bringing into charge to petroleum revenue tax certain sums received or receivable after 30th June 1982 in respect of—

(i) assets used or to be used in connection with oil fields, and
(ii) certain other assets situated in the United Kingdom, the territorial sea thereof or a designated area, within the meaning of the Continental Shelf Act 1964; and

(c) the treatment of sums so received or receivable for the purposes of income tax and corporation tax.—[Mr. Moore.]

Mr. Jack Straw: The resolution paves the way for those parts of the Finance Bill which were lost as a result of the Dissolution on 9 May.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Moore) on his appointment as Financial Secretary to the Treasury, and I look forward to hearing his reply in due course.
Hon. Members will have an opportunity to debate the clauses fully when the Bill returns to the House.
Since the House previously discussed oil taxation on 28 April, yet another change has taken place in oil taxation, which was announced in the middle of September, when the Chancellor had to rush out a decision that he would be withdrawing petroleum revenue tax relief on abortive explorations and other aspects of farm-ins to protect revenue amounting to about £1,200 million.
That is the twelfth major change in the oil taxation regime since the Government were elected in 1979 and it sits oddly with the pledge made in April 1979 by the present Secretary of State for Employment, then the Conservative spokesman on energy, that a Conservative Government would pursue
a steady policy designed to secure the fullest advantage to the nation as a whole.
We accept that oil taxation is a difficult area, but I hope that the new Bill that the Financial Secretary will be introducing will bring more coherence and permanence into oil taxation.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. John Moore): I thank the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) for his kind remarks. He is right in saying that the resolution paves the way for the introduction of an oil taxation Bill, which will complete this year's Budget package on the oil industry.
The Bill relates to the proposed changes to the rules for field expenditure relief. The technical provisions needed were far too complex to ask the House to pass in the short time available for either of this year's Finance Bills. Last summer, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that these changes, which had been dealt with in chapter 2, part IV, of the first Finance Bill, would be the subject of an oil taxation Bill to be introduced in the autumn. That is the Bill to which the resolution relates.
The hon. Member for Blackburn mentioned developments in September concerning the Forties field. I assure him that we shall be legislating in the Finance Bill. We want to make sure that the technical details are correct, having taken steps against the potential loss of tax.

Mr. T. H. H. Skeet: Clauses 80 to 87 and schedules 13 to 16 were relinquished when the first Finance Bill went through the House. Will any additional matters be included in the new Bill? There have been long consultations between the industry and the Treasury. They have been meaningful, but does my hon. Friend propose to include any additional matters?

Mr. Moore: My hon Friend has great experience and knowledge of the industry. He is right to say that there have been long and detailed consultations. They have produced further modest advances. In essence, the provisions were not complete at the time of the Finance Bill and the main change is that, as we announced in April, we have added an equivalent PRT charge on incidental receipts of foreign field owners of pipelines in our waters. They could otherwise have a competitive advantage over our own oil producers in attracting third party sharing.
We have also changed the rules on associated assets and I am sure that that will lead to considerable discussion in Committee. More generally, the opportunity has been taken to improve the provisions that were included in the clauses and schedules to which my hon. Friend referred in his intervention.
I should say a word about the background to the proposal mentioned by the hon. Member for Blackburn. The early pattern of development in the North sea was mainly of separate fields. Each had its own pipelines, treatment plants and other facilities or it was known from the outset that such facilities would be shared. The PRT system was well adapted to that.
However, it has been increasingly clear that the pattern of new developments will include smaller fields relatively close to existing facilities. For these, the natural and possibly the only viable course is for them to pay to use spare capacity in existing assets, particularly pipelines for getting their oil and gas ashore.
The existing PRT rules are not suitable for the new situation. They give relief to operators of mature fields

only to the extent that expenditure is incurred for their own fields. The prospect of shared use means that they should lose large amounts of the relief that they already have, and that relief for future expenditure would be restricted. That is no way to encourage the shared use that we need in order to develop the new generation of fields. We must rewrite the relief rules so that full relief is ensured even though assets are, or may be, shared with third parties.
We all look forward to detailed and lengthy discussion of those critical matters, and I urge the House to support the resolution.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That provision may be made for and in connection with—

(a) varying the reliefs available for certain expenditure incurred (before as well as after the passing of this Resolution) in connection with assets used or to be used in connection with oil fields; and
(b) bringing into charge to petroleum revenue tax certain sums received or receivable after 30th June 1982 in respect of—

(i) assets used or to be used in connection with oil fields, and
(ii) certain other assets situated in the United Kingdom, the territorial sea thereof or a designated area, within the meaning of the Continental Shelf Act 1964; and

(c) the treatment of sums so received or receivable for the purposes of income tax and corporation tax.

Bill ordered to be brought in upon the foregoing resolution by the Chairman of Ways and Means, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Secretary Walker, Mr. Peter Rees, Mr. John Moore, Mr. Barney Hayhoe and Mr. Ian Stewart.

OIL TAXATION

Mr. John Moore accordingly presented a Bill to vary the reliefs available for certain expenditure incurred in connection with assets used or to be used in connection with oil fields; to bring into charge to petroleum revenue tax certain sums received or receivable in respect of such assets and of certain other assets situated in the United Kingdom, the territorial sea thereof or a designated area, within the meaning of the Continental Shelf Act 1964; to amend Part II of the Oil Taxation Act 1975 in relation to sums so received or receivable; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 45].

Ground Consolidation (Glasgow)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. David Hunt.]

Mr. Jim Craigen: Although it is nearly midnight, I am glad to have this opportunity to mention some of the difficulties that arise in respect of ground consolidation projects in Glasgow.
Redevelopment in various parts of Glasgow has for some years been hampered by the legacy of mineral workings in the city. There are many parts of the city that are not designated as housing action areas where, nevertheless, ground settlement problems are experienced by property owners. However, the main burden of my remarks concerns the specific problems in housing action areas. Although the extent of mineral workings in the city is largely known, there are areas where they remain to be discovered, and where it is necessary to carry out test bores and other investigations so that property owners and the various statutory bodies are alerted to the need for necessary action.
Mr. Ian Stevens, formerly an honorary research fellow at Strathclyde university department of mining and petoleum engineering, has for a number of years made a special study of this subject and prepared a series of maps. I have a map showing the extent of mineral workings within the Maryhill constituency, but other parts of the city are much more troubled. I cite, for example, Hillhead, Springburn, Shettleston and the Govanhill area where there has been a series of problems.
I hope that the Minister will clarify the situation regarding funding the necessary investigation work. There can be a lengthy period while initial survey work is undertaken. Particular problems can arise if the mineral valuer has a suspicion about an area and decides that there might be a need for consolidation work to be done. Moreover, much time can be taken in undertaking the necessary researches and examination of the journals and other evidence of settlement problems.
The Minister will be aware of the correspondence and of the questions that I have asked the Scottish Office and his predecessors for some time now. I refer to the problem that Springburn and Possilpark housing association has had with a corner property at Balmore Road and Saracen Street. The property could be saved and rehabilitated. The residents certainly want that. Glasgow district council put forward a grant opplication for urban aid support from the Scottish Ofice, but it was turned down. As a result, the possible early rehabilitation of that property has been delayed. That property is now in the Springburn constituency as a result of boundary changes and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin) is anxious to pursue the matter.
Not long ago, I wrote to the Minister about the problem facing the Queen's Cross housing association and its plans for the St. George's Cross area of the city. The Minister was asked to visit those tenement properties in Maryhill Road and St. George's Road. He has intimated to me that the Housing Corporation will follow up the matter. The building could be developed and rehabilitated. At present it is not only an eyesore, but it provides intolerable conditions for those who occupy it. As the Minister will know, St. George's Cross is a key area in Glasgow. It is a focal point which it is important to preserve.
For some years the Park community council has been concerned about the future of several tenement buildings in the East Woodlands area of the city because of some old mineral workings. Rehabilitation plans may well be put at risk in that prime inner city area unless the Government accept responsibility for the necessary consolidation work. I could cite several other examples. The point is that Glasgow has a sufficient number of gap sites without allowing the creation of more through inaction.
The Government have been acting rather like Pontius Pilate in relation to the public sector. Several local authority properties may well have to be demolished because of soil stabilisation problems. The Scottish Office refuses to approve any urban aid applications that Glasgow district council submits to stabilise properties in the public sector. It is not always old coal mines that create the problems. In the Possilpark area some properties are at risk because they were built on black ash in the 1920s and 1930s. There are now settlement problems, which are making all sorts of difficulties for the tenants and the local authority.
Sometimes it is difficult to draw the line between the public and private sectors. The old mine workings know no distinction between one side of the street and the other when it comes to the private, public or voluntary sectors.
I understand that Govanhill housing association took legal advice some time ago about the responsibility of owner-occupiers. It was pointed out that it could be argued that private owners are not responsible for the mineral workings below them. I understand that this has not been tested in the courts, but it means that the Government should accept that they have some responsibility.
Many small shopkeepers in tenement buildings are already having to struggle to keep their businesses going and to pay their share of common repairs to maintain the safety of residential properties above them. The Government's crass announcement last week on house improvement grants is a considerable blow to these people as it is to many owner-occupiers in the tenements above. It is a considerable betrayal of the owner-occupiers so soon after the June general election and the Conservative party manifesto. I know that the Minister, in his other capacity as chairman of the Conservative party in Scotland, will know what was in it off by heart. It stated:
Housing Improvement grants have been increased…and will continue to play an important role.
Paradoxically, the action that the Government announced last week will force more owner-occupiers to sell their property so that some other body can undertake the remedial work. That will run counter to the Government's declared intention of extending home ownership.
In addition to answering the question that I asked about the necessary preliminary work, I hope that the Minister will comment on the guidance note that the Housing Corporation is to issue to housing associations about procedures. It seems to me that it will merely clarify what we know about current procedures rather than resolve the problem of who pays for the ground consolidation.
The Minister and his predecessor pointed out to me that section 29(2)(d) of the Housing Act 1974 contains provisions that could help. However, problems arise where the housing association does not have total ownership of the fiats. I suggest that, in the light of last week's discouragement over improvement grants, greater problems will face housing associations which have a minority, or even a majority, of the tenemental flats.
Who pays for the infilling costs where it is necessary to undertake ground consolidation is a political question. The response to that geological fact of life must come from the Government.
I hope that the Government will act in one, two or more ways to atone for last week's announcement on improvement grants. It would be straightforward if the Scottish Office would agree to a more positive response to urban aid applications from Glasgow district council in respect of housing action areas.
I believe that there is a happy precedent for Priesthill where, as a result of partnership between Glasgow district council and Barratt builders, part of the existing council stock will be rehabilitated and an open area developed with Barratt completing new houses and receiving urban aid assistance and improvement grants. That old helicopter gets around.
Another approach would be if the Scottish Development Agency were permitted by the Scottish Office to help in ground consolidation in residential areas. As I understand it, the London dockland area is much assisted in that respect by the development corporation with 100 per cent. development grants. I believe that the Department of the Environment tends to work through local authorities in England because there is no equivalent to the Scottish Development Agency. I hope that the Scottish Office will make a positive response to this tremendous problem.
It was interesting that just before the debate started we were considering aspects of North sea oil development. I suspect that the Minister has other responsibilities here and that in time we shall find that there are settlement problems on the sea bed as a result of oil exploration in the North sea that may well create future coastal erosion difficulties, but that is wide of the mark in tonight's debate.
The Minister has a responsibility to help Glasgow overcome some of the physical problems created by coal mining in the last century, to minimise much of the red tape that has been created, and to resolve administrative and practical problems that arise where ground consolidation work is necessary.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Michael Ancram): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Craigen) for raising tonight a question that is of practical significance to many residents of tenements scheduled for improvement. The thought of discussing the consolidation of oil wells in the North sea is one that fills me with dread, and I am glad that my responsibilities tonight extend only as far as the questions that the hon. Gentleman has raised.
The general problem of ground affected by mineral workings became an issue in the Glasgow eastern area renewal project some two or three years ago. The officer level management group of GEAR discussed the relative advantages and disadvantages of developing ground affected by old workings and the extent to which ground consolidation measures were necessary. A paper prepared for the management group explored the options of dealing with such ground. This paper has now been made generally available because of its relevance in other parts of Scotland. The paper suggests that in areas where ground stability is affected by old mineral workings an appropriate

development strategy need not necessarily involve preventive measures, such as ground consolidation, as a matter of course, but could instead assess the risk of eventually losing a small percentage of investments and accept that economic risk where it is reasonable to suppose that the cost will, in the long run, be less than that of preventive measures. It notes that alternative measures to consolidation may represent a better investment in particular cases—for example, the insertion of jacking points in the foundations.
I make no apology for stressing this apparently theoretical stance at the outset. It is all too easy for those involved in developments to presume an overwhelming public interest in ensuring that their particular site is developed according to their initial plan—regardless of ground conditions and the cost of dealing with them. Land is not in short supply in Glasgow, and we must not slavishly adhere to historic patterns of development if that involves a heavy price.
We also need to be clear, I think, that the holes under Glasgow do not belong to the Scottish Office. There must be no presumption that it is the Secretary of State's duty to equalise the development costs of all sites in the city. Some sites are too expensive to develop, and it is better that everyone should accept that at the outset.
The hon. Member has asked about the position on the funding of technical investigative work which is required to be carried out in connection with the possible need for site consolidation in regard to a particular scheme.
Investigative work of this kind is part of the work which requires to be carried out by an association in assessing the viability of a project before capital expenditure, whether on the acquisition of unimproved properties or on development works, is committed. Where adequate information on undermining is not already in existence and available to the association, an up-to-date report may well be required and the cost of this may be met in a number of different ways. The district council may for example agree to fund the cost as part of the work that the housing association is performing as its agents in assessing the prospects of viable rehabilitation works being carried out in a given instance. Such help as this may be particularly necessary for the association that does not have funds of its own available for the purpose.
Where further survey work requires to be carried out at a later stage in relation to a particular tenement block as part of the design of a detailed rehabilitation scheme, then the professional costs involved will count along with other consultants' fees, as part of the capital cost of that particular scheme. These arrangements apply to survey work carried out in connection with the planning of housing association projects where professional fees may be incurred and I have no indication that they are not adequate for the purpose of meeting consultants' costs which deal with engineering as opposed to constructional aspects of a scheme.

Mr. Craigen: rose—

Mr. Ancram: If I can finish what I have to say, I may be able to answer the hon. Gentleman's point.
If a detailed case for applying different arrangements is put to me I will certainly consider it, but I must make it clear that all capital costs in connection with consolidation works, including the costs of survey work, must be justifiable on the basis of the viability test applied


to rehabilitation schemes generally. The hon. Gentleman may feel on the basis of what I have said that he might like to write to me on the matter.

Mr. Donald Dewar: rose—

Mr. Ancram: If I am to cover all the questions asked, I had better continue with my speech.
In regard to sites occupied by residential buildings, the most obvious problem is as the hon. Gentleman said, that undermining of tenements is in many cases threatening their useful life for the future and raising problems both about the economics of remedial works and responsibility for funding them.
The role of housing associations in carrying out comprehensive tenement rehabilitation schemes in Glasgow has been fully described in the hon. Gentleman's remarks I need not elaborate on that, except to pay my tribute to the great contribution that they, and other associations elsewhere in our urban communities, are making to the revitalisation of areas where otherwise people would be faced with loss of their homes through clearance or living in unsatisfactory circumstances until the inevitable occurred.
That said, I should make the point clearly that the undermining of tenements is not something that has until now held back progress in comprehensive rehabilitation to any significant extent. Most of the Glasgow associations have been able to proceed with full programmes involving tenements that have not required ground consolidation or other remedial measures of that kind. The volume of current and recent spending by community-based housing associations in Glasgow speaks for itself. Since 1979 more than £120 million has been invested by them in rehabilitation in the city, and the Housing Corporation is planning to spend a further £40–£50 million for that purpose in the present financial year.
Substantial budgets have thus been allocated to at least a score of community-based associations in Glasgow, in most cases as an increasing scale in recent years particularly. The result is that associations have now completed some 9,000 rehabilitation units in the city, more than half of those in the past four to five years. It would be quite wrong to claim that site consolidation problems had reduced the impetus of that remarkable programme, though there have, of course, been difficulties for individual associations, as I am well aware.

Mr. Craigen: The Minister said that it is not a great problem. Is he saying that if there is a big problem we may have to write off substantial parts of the city on economic grounds because the Government will not lift the tar?

Mr. Ancram: As I said earlier, we must study the economics of each case for remedial work.
The hon. Gentleman raised a question about the urban aid programme and the SDA. Glasgow district has argued for some time that consolidation works should be financed through the urban programme, but as the hon. Gentleman knows, I have always resisted that. The urban programme should not be deployed as a back-door housing grant. Any consolidation costs must form part of a single investment appraisal. One area where the programme does have an important contribution to make, however, is in assisting councils to dispose of land for private development. As the hon. Gentleman may be aware, Glasgow district already has urban programme approval to the carrying out of

consolidation works at a site in Priesthill. Ground consolidation is therefore not only a question of stabilising existing buildings. Indeed, I would say that it is equally a question of preparing derelict land for development, some of which may also be undermined.
The SDA has powers under section 8 of the Scottish Development Agency Act 1975 to acquire derelict land and carry out works on it, to enable it to be brought into use or to improve its appearance. I understand that officials of Glasgow district and of the agency are having discussions about opportunities for the agency to exercise these powers—not simply to create public open space, but to enable development to take place on the land. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the agency discusses its proposed land renewal programmes with local authorities as a matter of course, to get a local view of the priorities for the limited resources available. Costs and returns need to be carefully assessed in each instance, of course, but in principle I can see much to be gained by the judicious use of the SDA's powers to prepare suitable brownfield sites for sale to private housebuilders. Indeed, the point has arisen in recent discussions between officials of SEPD and the SDA.

Mr. Dewar: rose—

Mr. Ancram: I have a limited time in which to speak and there are a number of other matters which the hon. Gentleman raised and which I hope to cover. I hope, therefore, that the hon. Member will allow me to continue.
It is important to distinguish this sort of activity from the consolidation of ground on which housing already stands. As I have said already, site consolidation costs, where they arise as a legitimate cost for a housing association, have to be evaluated as an integral element of the whole rehabilitation project. There is no point in seeking to use the SDA as a new sort of housing improvement body. That is not desirable, as the agency's principal focus must continue to be as an economic development agency. Residential land is "in use" already, of course, and in any case I would certainly not want to see the agency acquiring tenemental properties. The housing corporation has, as I have said, full delegated power to approve housing association rehabilitation costs, and there is every merit in dealing with this issue through a single body.
With schemes carried through by housing associations, costs require approval before tenders are accepted in order that grant may be paid once the work is completed. Before 1 October 1982, responsibility for cost approvals was discharged by my Department, with costs up to a certain limit being subject to approval by the corporation on the basis of delegation. Since that date, the corporation has had full delegated powers to approve costs, subject only to the need for them to comply with guidance of a general nature provided by my Department. The form and content of that guidance are critical to the future handling of this problem.
The point which my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart), tried to make plain in the answers that he provided to questions from the hon. Member earlier this year was that site consolidation costs, where they arise as a legitimate cost for a housing association, should be seen as part of the cost of the whole rehabilitation project. On that basis, there is no funding issue separate from that of general funding for


rehabilitation projects and no assessment of cost separate from the overall assessment of the viability of rehabilitation in the case of a given block, or wider scheme, which should precede any commitment of funds.
The housing corporation needs a framework against which it can proceed to consider individual projects involving expenditure on consolidation. The end product of excessive recent consultation is a guidance note for housing associations which is designed to indicate in what circumstances consolidation costs will be accepted for the purpose of scheme approval and subsequent payment of grant. That is the other matter that the hon. Gentleman raised. This note is, I understand, on the point of being issued by the housing corporation. Meanwhile, it has been applying the principles agreed in consultation with my Department, and another scheme has been approved recently on this basis. One of the earlier approvals was in Firrhill Street, Maryhill, which is in the hon. Member's constituency.
In the recent consideration there has been a need to consider legality, the payment of housing association grant. My Department has been able to confirm to the housing corporation that section 29 of the Housing Act 1974—the provision under which the purposes of the grant are defined — enables payment to be made to associations in respect of any necessary costs of a rehabilitation project, including non-recoverable costs in respect of properties not in the ownership of the association where owners decline to contribute to their share of the costs and cannot be forced to do so, either because of the housing action area resolution or otherwise. In such cases, however, it will clearly be necessary for the association to be fully satisfied that the work is necessary to secure the association's investment in the block. That is a precondition of the grant being payable at all.
The questions that arise are not, however, limited to the legal powers to pay grant. It must be shown that the work to be carried out is necessary for the rehabilitation of the block, close or other group of houses.
In projects where an association does not have full ownership, the guiding principle is that it should expect to

do no more than meet its own share of the costs, nothwithstanding any role it may have in co-ordinating the rehabilitation of the project area as a whole. It is recognised, however, that there may be cases where the association has a substantial holding in the property, short of full ownership, and there can be a case for approval of payment of other owners' costs for site consolidation to project the association's interest— for example, when part of a block where the association wishes to improve houses in its ownership has a number of other owners and the stability of both groups of houses is threatened. This approach would, of course, be less and less appropriate as the proportionate share held by an association diminished.

Mr. Craigen: The Minister is encouraging housing associations to build more flats for sale.

Mr. Ancram: I am aware of the demands that I am making through the Housing Corporation and housing associations. When I met the Federation of Housing Associations the other day I made it clear that the Government believe that the associations play an important role.
Before that interruption, I was talking about the approach which will be less and less appropriate as the proportionate share held by an association diminished. In such a case it would be necessary for the association to produce evidence to show that the work involved is necessary to secure its own investment in the block and that the private owners who do not wish to join with the association on a voluntary basis cannot readily be shown to have legal liability to pay—either under the common law or arising from the requirements that they themselves have to meet in relation to conformity with the tolerable standard on account of the housing action area declaration.
In the case where an association has no ownership in a block there will, of course, be no power to pay any grant on consolidation costs, and the appropriateness of paying grant—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour,MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twenty-one minutes past Twelve o'clock.